The Night of the Showboat
by Gunney
Summary: Prompted by a comment made in the episode "The Night of the Colonel's Ghost" Jim and Arte are drawn into the lives of two women with a dark and complicated past, and the mystery surrounding the remains of a showboat.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue - As seen in the episode TNOT Colonel's Ghost

A dead town called Gibsonville, haunted by a ghost with deadly habits. Arte had entered the town after not hearing from his partner for far too long, disguised as an Englishman, looking to hunt his first buffalo. When they finally managed a moment alone together the two men walked the streets updating one another.

As they approached a large bronze statue in the square, Arte pointed his peculiarly shaped cane at the statue. "Ah...that I take it is the hunk of bronze for which the President is willing to risk his life."

"That's the late Colonel Gibson," Jim responded, emphasizing the word 'late' for some reason. "Rumor has it that it's his ghost that's seeking vengeance on this town."

Arte's face hadn't changed, and Jim stared right back until Arte said, "A ghost who breaks necks, ah, come on Jim."

Having seen the broken necks himself Jim let his jaw hang slack prepared to defend the theory as Arte walked away from him and onto the boardwalk.

Except there was no defense, beyond his having witnessed it all. "I wish I had a better answer," Jim said, "One thing is for sure, the secret lies somewhere in that old hotel built by Josiah Gibson. Wish I knew where the music came from." He added, almost as an afterthought.

"Music? What mu- oh you mean that organ that I heard when I first came in?" Arte asked, recalling the ominous tones that had played, as a sort of introduction to the town.

"Yeah and.." Jim's tone was thoughtful, as if he were connecting dots somewhere in his head. Both men stopped as they stepped down from the board walk. "Whenever there's a broken neck there's always...there's always music."

A thought struck Arte and he gave a small laugh, clasping his hands in front of him. "You know I once played the organ on a showboat. You know what made me give it up?"

"No, what?"

_"_People kept offering to break _my _neck_." _


	2. Chapter 2

October 1874

Cincinnati, Ohio

It began the day that Arte and Jim left Washington D.C. On their way west to pick up three witnesses to a Carson City Mint robbery, they overnighted, for both their sakes, in the city of Cincinnati, the southern most point of the state of Ohio.

The signal had gone to the engineer who had made no qualms about stopping for the night and they rolled onto a siding at the Pearl Street station at 4:30 pm.

With plenty of time to make dinner somewhere in the city and see some of the sights, Arte dressed in his black tuxedo, white ruffled shirt and gold tie, grabbed his black cape and swagger stick and was practically out the door before he remembered the other reason they had stopped for the night.

Tapping the tip of the stick against the door to their private berths Arte stuck his head in, about to call his partner's name. Jim was sprawled across his bunk, mouth open, sleeping soundly to the hiss of steam quietly filtering through the room. A steam valve cracked only the tiniest of bits allowed enough moisture into the air to soothe the cold that had managed to overwhelm and subdue the indomitable Agent West.

Jim needed a night or two of sleep that didn't involve rocking, and Arte had no intention of catching said cold and planned to spend his evening in a hotel room, or else stretched out in a drunken stupor on the settee in the lounge.

Reassured that his partner slept soundly and that he would remain undisturbed in the locked varnish car Arte set out to see what Cincinnati had to offer him.

The streets all inevitably lead to the public docks on the Ohio River and it didn't take long for Arte to walk from the station to the river front. There, berthed in long lines along the docks, were dozens of river boats, some moored permanently, others taking on passengers.

Those that remained dock side served as restaurants, gambling parlors, or salons. One boat, without an engine or paddles, quickly brought a smirk to Arte's face. While the boat herself wasn't familiar to him the design _was_. She was clearly a showboat, and the music and voices coming from the inner halls was an instant invitation Arte couldn't pass up.

He stepped aboard grinning as the transfer from solid ground to river bound brought back memories.

* * *

June 1843

On The Ohio River

Aboard the Showboat Monica II

"Sandy!" The young, excited female voice piped from the top most deck of the white washed showboat, brilliant blue eyes scanning the banks of the Ohio River on the Indiana side, as the miles and miles of green, verdant, untempered, jungle-like riverside began to look cultured, tamed, and civilized. They were approaching a town. "Sandy, where are ya!?" She cried, desperately searching for the dark, curly-haired 18-year-old. Two years her junior, but at times he seemed easily ten years older than she or her husband.

As cast members streamed by her on the narrow platform between the banister of the third deck and the paneled wall of the ship, eagerly tittering about last-minute rehearsal opportunities, and scrambling to their dressing rooms for costumes and makeup, she searched each face not finding the one she was hoping to see. The most important one. The one who would announce to the farmers and townspeople and passersby on the river banks as they rolled in, that the showboat was coming. The one who would play the steam organ.

"Sandy!" She screamed frustrated as she stomped her way to the open roof of the showboat, her goal an observation room set on the flat expanse of tar, that did little more than provide a lookout...or a handy spot for lovers seeking a little privacy.

She had hiked up her belled skirt to climb the narrow set of white washed, wooden stairs, to the roof, but tamped them down with both hands as the wind caught the cloth like a sail. She crossed the handful of feet of open rooftop and cautiously poked her head into what otherwise would have been a wheelhouse on a normal steamboat. There wasn't much to the room. Windows at waist level around most of the square, a bench that was attached to the wall on three sides and a lantern that hung in a small cupola at the ceiling. The windows were opened to let in the cool early summer breeze, but there was no one there.

Frustrated the twenty-year-old wife and mother straightened as she stepped fully into the room, her hands on her hips. She had searched the showboat stem to stern. Unless Sandy was on the towboat he had to have, once again, gone overboard. And three times in as many weeks seemed a bit much even for someone as unused to water travel as Sandy appeared to be.

A second later a haunting moan chilled her spine, coming from behind the door. The sound turned into a chuckle, then outright laughter as the door slammed shut behind her and Sandy's grinning face met hers. His brown eyes twinkled, as he smiled in his own disarmingly charming way, scooping her around the waist even as she turned away from him to try to flee out the door. She shrieked, the sound turning into a hushed giggle, not so secretly in delight. She beat at his arms, but half-heartedly and when his lips found the back of her neck, she stopped fighting altogether, shuddering a little.

"Sandy..." She protested.

"Yes, Anna." The voice in her ear was smooth, curiously masculine despite Sandy's youth. But she wasn't surprised. Sandy was a master of voices. She wasn't sure she'd heard his real voice yet.

"Sandy...now stop that." She struggled half-heartedly.

The lips drew back from her neck, but his arms didn't release her, and she reasoned that she was still leaning back into them because she was off-balance.

"Stop what, Anna?" the voice asked, a smile evident in his tone. He was a tease, and a flirt, and carefree. Everything that her husband of two years had ceased to be. There was also something dark and mysterious too, about the young man, lurking under the surface, that she was knew was there, but hadn't yet seen.

The hands of the young man holding her were moving, traveling, and she knew where they would end up and managed to pull herself from his grasp just as one of the ties on her bodice slipped loose. Blushing furiously she reached behind her and pulled it taught again, throwing a hasty bow together, even as the man in trousers, a light green shirt, and a forest green vest, stepped in, taking advantage of her occupied hands to press her chin up with his palm, and kiss her square on the lips. A curiously tender gesture, especially in the face of who he was, or rather, wasn't.

When their lips parted both were breathless.

"Ss-sandy we...we can't.."

"What do you mean we can't...we _are_." Another kiss, this one lighter than the first, even more tender.

Somehow Analise was more out of breath when she broke away. Only the pressure of his thumb and forefinger on her chin kept her from escaping the attentions of the brown-eyed youth, but still she remained where she was.

"We're appro-" Her whispered statement was lost on his lips again. When he pulled back he asked,

"We're appro-?"

"-ching a town?" Anna offered, her blue eyes swimming desperately for shore, as she tucked her lips away, shrinking back from the full abandon that had nearly swallowed the both of them. The ardor of her lover seemed to calm a bit but to her relief he didn't remove his hand entirely from her person. Releasing her chin, he let his hand slide down to her neck, his thumb brushing the curve of her lower jaw.

Then her words seemed to sink in and a different part of Sandy burst through. The showman, the actor, the, yes even so, the ham. "A town?"

Anna knew that she wasn't Sandy's first love. She had probably been the third or fourth thing that he fell in love with after he boarded the Monica II in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania three weeks ago. As an actor the stage was his first love, the music his second, the boat herself his third. This she knew, but hidden away in her heart was the knowledge that she was the only human being he chased after on board.

It was a forbidden love and one that, some day would come to an end, yes, this she knew. But she loved him first and foremost. And anything that brought him joy, brought her the same joy.

"The organ!" Sandy said, turning and ripping his olive-green pea coat from the inside handle of the door. He slipped into it grinning, nearly out the door, before he skipped back into the room, grabbed her by the hips and kissed her once more.

"Yes, the organ, you goof." Anna said to herself as she stood in the door to the small shack that had become their heaven, watching the young man trip across the roof, and down the narrow ladder. She quietly composed herself, hidden away in their secluded place, before she stepped out onto the roof and waited for the sounds of the steam organ playing one of the songs featured in their show. Sandy's favorite song, as it was also one that he sang and preformed. "Take Your Time Miss Lucy"

On the river deck she could hear David, their string master, striking up his banjo in tune with the fast tempo song, already shouting out the lyrics, various members of their company joining him as they finished dressing in their colorful and flamboyant costumes.

The dock ahead had held only a handful of slumbering workers and a dock master minutes ago, but now the people of the town that branched upward and outward, were responding to the loud, shrill tones of the organ, the gay glitter of the banjo, the bright colors of the costumes and the clownish toots of the towboat guiding their barge down the river.

Her husband, Joseph Unger, captain of the boat, would be below, leaving the steering to the pilot. He was a proud man, more prideful of his position as captain of the boat than he was anything else. She should have been down by his side, completing the picture of the handsome ruling couple, and she knew he would be upset because she hadn't been. Had the feverish kisses in the rooftop rendezvous been compensation enough for the dues she would pay later?

A blush flew to her cheeks, far more youthful in appearance in the last week than they had been in the past two years.

Yes...she thought. Sandy was compensation enough.

She began to sing as she descended the stairs, moving down to the cabins that sat at the water line at the center of the ship and scooping up her swaddled and sleeping two-year old girl, before she took her to the deck of the ship, joining the cast in full.

As the Showboat Monica made berth, two of the tumblers who doubled as riverman, cast her lines ashore and made them fast. The Unger Theatre Company finished the final verse of the rollicking song to the cheers and applause of the grateful townspeople. Always the first ashore, by his own order, Anna's husband Joseph gleamed as he stepped to the dock, his shoulders thrown back. From his top hat, to his ruffled shirt to his gleaming knee-length boots he was a sight to see, unusually handsome and dashing. Few women noticed the cold, inhuman pale of his blue eyes, however.

As he opened his mouth to speak, preparing to welcome one and all to his Showboat for the evening's first performance, a final atonal blast came from the organ. There were two aboard the Monica, one that operated 44-pipes jutting out of the roof of the boat, and another operating the full complement of 88 pipes behind the stage.

The 44-pipe organ was controlled by a keyboard on the third level of the showboat at the aft, and as the blast sounded all eyes followed what appeared to be the casually annoyed gaze of the showboat captain, to where a tousled brown head, and grinning brown eyes could be seen just above the banister on the third level.

The blue eyes that met Sandy's mischievous grin were not, however, casual. There was a threat there, the same threat that Sandy had seen twice before. While he was certain that Joseph knew nothing about his dalliance with Anna, he'd made himself an enemy of the captain fairly early on. If it weren't for his overwhelming bevy of talents, his most recent trip overboard would have undoubtedly been his last.

But that was something personal between himself and the captain, and the reason for Sandy's ill-timed interruption.

Message sent and received, Sandy redirected the steam away from the organ and went below to join the rest of the cast as Joseph Unger returned his attention to the quieting chuckles of the audience.

"Come one, come all. Young and old. Weak and strong. Come to sing, laugh, dance and cry. Come to see great feats of acrobatics and tumbling, to hear the sweetest music made by God's creation. To see the most dramatic of theatrical presentations. Never before has so much talent been brought together in one company...and then of course there is the rest of the cast." Joseph grinned, pridefully, and after a moment the audience began to chuckle again. If Captain Unger was nothing else, he was most assuredly a great showman at heart.

"The price!? A pittance! A single penny for all children under the age of 13. 2 Pennies for every adult. All other compensations may be considered and bartered here an hour before show time.

This evening's show begins at six o'clock."

With his final announcement ended Unger turned to the gathered cast, and with one stroke started a final chorus of the lively tune they had been singing coming into the dock, this sung only to the strumming of the banjo, but with the strength of twenty voices in harmony, a capella. The sound echoed along the boards of the dock, around the barrels and crates of cargo, and into the delighted ears of every man, woman and child within fifty feet of the boat. The cheers, applause and delight that greeted the end of their song was only a taste of what they hoped to hear later that evening.

With energy born of anticipation each cast member waved gaily and flitted onto the dock, greeting each townsperson with a handbill advertising show times, prices and the evenings they would perform, shouting that they should tell one and all and bring as many as they could.

"Good clean entertainment" the handbills promised. "A gay evening of music, theatre and acrobatics to delight the ear and eye."

The only thing the Monica II didn't have onboard was an animal menagerie.

Their exuberant entrance to the town made up for it however, and the news quickly spread. The showboat was in town, for four days. Not something to miss.

* * *

1874

Cincinnati, Ohio

The showboat that had once been, existed no longer. While the stage remained, the theatre seats had long ago been gutted and a wrap around balcony added to accommodate tables. The galley had probably been expanded and no doubt what would have been crew quarters were now used as dressing rooms for the show girls displaying their undergarments on stage. There were the occasional ballads sung, and humorous patter given in the new vaudeville style that was sweeping the nation but it wasn't a show boat.

A club perhaps, and restaurant. The clientage were dressed as he was however and Arte swallowed his disappointment and allowed the waiter to seat him. He ordered, starting with champagne and was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food. His table, on what would have been the third deck balcony allowed him an excellent view of the stage and of the city of Cincinnati as night fell and the lamps were lit. More spectacular than the city was the view of the river, alive with the brilliant lights of riverboats, barges and tugboats.

When the show below ended, the rest of the evening was meant to be passed to the sound of a piano, violin, viola, and bass, playing waltzes and etudes. His meal finished, Arte decided to take advantage of what was clearly meant to be dancing music. He had observed, for most of the evening, a pair of young women taking their evening meal together at a table on the main floor. Neither had been joined, or approached, by any males but for the waiters, and it seemed that their lively conversation had dimmed as both continued to sip at glasses of wine, and watched the couples filtering onto the dance floor.

Arte smirked and ordered a bottle of champagne, waiting until it came before he stood, draped his napkin over his forearm, and took the magnum, chilling bucket and stand, below. Slipping easily into character he marched to the table where the enchanting young women sat and placed the champagne down in front of them.

The first, with long curling brown hair, brown eyes and a rounded face with dimples blinked in surprise at the performance, then stuttered, "Ex-cuse me, sir but we didn't-"

Arte smiled kindly and said, "Of course you didn't..." Then produced two champagne glasses and set them on the table.

The second, sharing similar hair but with a definite reddish tint, the same rounded face, but with freckles and no dimples, blinked her blue eyes and set her glass down. "Sir, forgive me, but you must have the wrong table you see we didn't-"

She was cut off by the subtle pop of the cork, before Arte deftly filled both glasses. "This is compliments of the gentleman seated on the balcony." He said finally, standing straight as he placed the bottle back in the ice bucket.

"The gentleman-?" The brown-eyed lady, dressed superbly in a brownish red gown that neither reeked of wealth, nor implied dowdy, stood to crane her neck, trying to see where Arte was pointing.

The blue-eyed woman, also dressed with exquisite taste in a dark, royal blue gown, craned her neck to see behind her.

"Up there on the balcony- oh that's right." Arte tsked, snapping the fingers of his right hand. "I've forgotten, that was me."

"That was...um."

Arte bowed, smiling quietly. "Artemus Gordon."

"Artem- Are you a waiter?" The lady in blue asked, squinting her eyes as her head tilted.

"Not this particular evening, no. And I do regret that I have but one pair of feet to offer but, would either of you kind gentlewomen care to dance?" Arte gave his most ingratiating smile, bowed at the waist, with his hand held out in invitation.

The ladies eyed each other, the one in the brown dress finally grinning and saying, "Age before beauty." She received a swift kick under the table as the lady in royal blue stood, curtsied to Artemus, then allowed him to guide her quietly onto the floor. They were quiet for the first few moments, each feeling out the dancing ability of the other until they settled into a comfortable pace.

"Forgive my dining companion, Mr. Gordon." The blue-eyed lady smiled, her cheeks flushed from the wine and the minor exertion. "She has a tendency to speak before she thinks."

Arte merely grinned, enjoying already the good humor of both women. "My dear lady, so that I may no longer think of you as the devastating beauty in blue, could I know your name?"

The young woman chuckled softly. "I don't know, I rather like being 'the devastating woman in blue'. But then what sweet lies will you tell my companion when she is next in your arms?"

"Slightly less devastating, but none the less charming flower in red." Arte offered, grinning when his 'lady in blue' threw her head back and laughed. A full-throated, but still lovely sound. He felt, suddenly, as if he had met the woman before. The knowing look in her eye seemed to confirm it.

"Please, m'lady. You leave me desperate at your feet should this song end and I not know your name."

"My name is Hannah, Hannah McGuff, Mr. Gordon." She finally answered.

"Miss McGuff.."

"Mrs. McGuff. My husband died in the war." Her story was not unlike that of many women her age, or younger, or older. The sheer volume of husbands, brothers and sons that died in the War Between the States had destroyed too many households to count.

With such obvious charms Arte found it difficult to imagine that Mrs. McGuff had remained a widow by fate.

"My deepest regrets." Arte said gallantly.

"Thank you, Mr. Gordon." Mrs. McGuff said sincerely, smiling softly.

They danced the rest of the waltz to its completion silently. As the music ended Arte found himself reluctant to release her, but she quietly demurred.

"I should like to go and enjoy some of the champagne that you gifted us with, Mr. Gordon." She said, plainly and allowed Arte to escort her back to the table.

As Arte bowed to take the hand of the lady in red a livelier tune began, the piano player stepping away from the keyboard to call the dance meant to act as a sort of mixer where in the couples, through the various moves would at each point in the dance be coupled with every partner on the dance floor.

It wasn't long before Arte was separated from the lady in red, and a second unaccompanied male found his way to the table, inviting Mrs. McGuff to join in as well. By the time the reel had finished all the parties were out of breath, grinning happily and escaping to their tables. The band took a break and Arte was invited to sit with Mrs. McGuff and her companion, Mrs. Louise Johnson, while they recovered.

After a toast had been offered and accepted, Mrs. McGuff asked, "Are you staying in Cincinnati long, Mr. Gordon?"

"Unfortunately, no. I have pressing business out west and my train leaves tomorrow morning. An...unexpected illness aboard stalled us here over night in your fair city."

"You aren't a traveling salesman, are you Mr. Gordon?" Mrs. Johnson asked, and all three laughed at the age-old joke.

"No, no...I..." Arte thought about it for a moment, sipping from his champagne glass before he decided against the complication of the truth. "I'm a professor. I study anthropology, archeology and the like. Terribly boring, historical matters, that two ladies such as yourse-"

"Oh, stop right there, Mr. Gordon." Mrs. McGuff declared, grinning broadly. Once again Arte was struck with the assurance that he knew the woman from somewhere.

"Indeed, Hannah, you see Mr. Gordon my-em my companion and I have been amateur students of archeology most of our lives."

"Good heavens."

"If you'll forgive my bragging, I would say that the amount of time Louise and I have spent studying tomes of archeology, etymology, anthropology, egyptology- oh the list goes on-would far outweigh that of your average male archeology student at any university."

"How splendid." Arte managed between breaths as the ladies continued.

"In fact we've only recently returned from the Mississippi river where in we assisted in recovering several artifacts from the ruins of an old boat lost 30 years ago." Hannah added, before Louise picked up the train of thought.

"We had hoped that it would have been a sunken river boat from the civil war, something...confederate in nature, perhaps carrying gold."

"Or something even older," Hannah continued. "There was a dig a year ago that Louise and I assisted with-we weren't paid of course-"

"We were barely tolerated-" Louise interjected.

"But the professor was kind, and one of the few whose interest lay in educating all students regardless of gender." Hannah added.

In the millisecond pause Arte put his finger up and blurted, "Forgive me ladies...one moment."

Both stopped speaking and almost simultaneously reached out their hands for their champagne glasses, taking sips and returning the glasses to the table in perfect unison.

Arte watched, fascinated, before he recalled his question and asked, "You've actively participated in archeological digs..."

Both women nodded.

"As...diggers, archeologists..."

"Camp assistants." Both women said in unison, then gleamed proudly at Arte.

"Then before we continue, I should like to propose another toast." Arte raised his glass waiting for the girls to follow suit. "To the day when the finest archeological discovery of the century is attributed to Doctors McGuff and Johnson." Arte said sincerely, and as they touched their glasses to his, both women grinned at each other and agreed, "Here, here."

Soon after their champagne bottle ran dry Arte proudly escorted Hannah and Louise on either arm out of the restaurant and onto the still bustling streets of the city. It was almost 8:00. Not early, but not too late. Both women had claimed to be long time residents of the city and were more than happy to guide their new escort through the sights. After they toured the water front they headed up Vine street where the giant, and brand new public library stood. Closed at that hour, but still magnificent.

"Would you like to see the inside?" Hannah's eyes danced as she asked the question. Arte had discovered that both women were widows, and neither were over the age of 33. Young, but not too young, and delightfully intelligent, even in their slightly intoxicated state.

Louise giggled on his other arm and said, "We know the night guard. Heavens, we've spent so much time inside we practically live there."

"The night guard, good Lord...what am I thinking, Louise! I was given a key not a fortnight ago!" Hannah declared and together they snuck around to a side door where Hannah fitted a large key from her hand bag into a lock, opening the heavy door and leading the way inside.

Despite being closed the library was still well-lit, the gas lamps turned down low.

The hall they entered was unassuming and looked rather forlorn, the tiling not fully completed and some scraps left over from construction, swept into a corner. Arte explored further into the hallway while the two ladies concentrated on the door, making certain that it was indeed locked behind them.

When they finally rejoined him, Arte had already found his way into the vestibule where a low hanging chandelier glowed faintly over the gray slate tile. Several other chandeliers decorated the room that had tables and chairs placed around it. From the vestibule floor he could see a small part of the main library, but could neither see its floor, nor ceiling.

Together the three mounted the stairs, both girls drawing away from him as Arte stepped alone into the main room. He was soon greeted with three awe-inspiring stories of wood, cast iron and glass. Forty feet up the whole of the main room was sheltered by a glass sky light that made up most of the ceiling, and would allow natural light to fill the room during the day. The main room was a giant rectangle, lined by a balcony that served as the second floor.

From the second floor to the ceiling the vast space was lined with shelves upon shelves of books. While some shelves only rose to the standard ten feet, others were stacked atop one another stretching the entire height of the building, and girded by iron railed miniature walk ways that could only be accessed by spiral stair cases. These wound like stout serpents to the top most levels.

"There are over 200,000 books." Hannah said softly once again standing at his elbow.

"An entire room dedicated to newspapers from all across the nation, even the world." Louise said.

"There are alcoves, and secret passages." Hannah sighed, feeling the same chill she always felt any time she entered the building. The key, given to her by a night watchman who knew her study habits and her trustworthiness, and who undoubtedly was seeking her affections, had been a truly wonderful, and cherished gift.

"Magnificent." Arte finally managed. His scholarly pursuits had begun relatively late in life. His ability to read had begun with his mother, but his choice of literature had floundered between dime novels and newspaper headings until the immortal bard was first firmly planted between his fingertips.

The worlds it had opened, and that had expanded with every new book fiction or non-fiction, had finally met their match with this building that had been created to house them.

As Hannah watched Mr. Gordon's face she thought about her own first reaction to the library. Any person who found solace in the quieting, welcoming arms of a story would admit to feeling some measure of fondness for their local library. If fondness could have built a shack filled with novels, unhindered adoration had been the driving force behind the cathedral-like building that housed Cincinnati's marvelous collection.

"This has been our most recent university, Mr. Gordon." Louise said, almost hesitantly.

"Would you like the full tour?" Hannah offered a moment later and excitedly the two ladies led him floor by floor through the whole of the building.

By the time Arte checked his pocket watch it was 9:30. The tour had ended in the newspaper room where the ladies had begun telling him of their latest research, having to do with the 30-year-old boat they had helped raise from the bottom of the Mississippi river.

"Her name sadly was illegible, but she had to have been a tug of some kind. Pulling a barge perhaps. Most curious however the hull had been pierced many times by something...unnatural." Louise was saying, her voice thoughtful and dimmed by the long evening. She had perched on one of the reading tables, leaning back as the wine and the excitement of their night caught up with her, threatening sleep.

"Unnatural...as in..." Arte prompted, glancing between Louise and Hannah, who sat at one of the newspaper stands flipping through an old volume that she had been through more than once before in the past few days.

"Bullet holes." Hannah said after moment, distracted by what she was reading.

Louise yawned softly, careful to cover her mouth with a gloved hand. "Yes, as though some person had intentionally scuttled her. And..." She said, a wicked grin coming to her face that struck Arte for the third time that evening with the knowledge that he knew these women. Either these women or their parents. "There were bodies."

"Louise..." Hannah chided, before she fell silent ducking toward the compendium of newspapers in front of her, and disappearing behind the slanted reading table entirely.

"Oh, Hannah. You're an archeologist Mr. Gordon, surely bodies are a source of fascination for you, and not vulgar or a repulsive."

Arte wasn't sure how to answer, and found a moment later that he didn't have to. Louise slid to her feet, wincing, probably at the bite of the delicate shoes she had been wearing all evening.

"There wasn't any skin on them, of course, nor icky bits. Just skeletons. But the most curious part..." Louise had slowly meandered closer to where Arte sat perched and now stood a hairs breadth away from touching his thigh with the voluminous cloth of her gown. "Was that there was a woman amongst the bodies. Do you know how to tell a woman's skeleton, from that of a man's, Mr. Gordon?"

His heart had started to beat a little faster even before his sluggish brain registered just how quickly the situation had changed. Louise's mumblings about bodies had slipped rather suddenly into a flirtatious tone that the subject matter seemed to deny, but her body language made absolutely clear. Arte had straightened, working at putting some sort of distance between himself and the younger woman, if only for the sake of respectability, when Hannah's sharp voice came from behind the reading table.

"Louise Unger!" The sound of her maiden name forced a flush of anger onto the young woman's face as she snapped her gaze to the flustered face of her elder.

"Unger!?" Arte demanded in surprise, but he was ignored as Louise's face turned from anger to concern, a silent communication between both women bidding Louise to hurry to Hannah's side.

The name was familiar, easily, but Arte couldn't place it, and the sudden concern on Hannah's face as they stood over the news compendium had jolted Arte out of the haze he'd been falling into. Standing he went to join them, only his move seemed to startle Louise into backing away from the table and Hannah tried to slam the compendium shut before he could see it.

Arte caught the gap in the book before Hannah's fingers left it, however, and as he grasped the cover to open the book again he looked askance to the older woman. She said nothing, backing away from him as if he were a maddened killer.

As he opened the book he could see why.

The newspaper compendium was thirty years old, perfectly coinciding with the time period the ladies claimed surrounded the sinking of the mysterious towboat. The paper itself had come from New Orleans but the article was a circular that had been reprinted belatedly. It had been issued by a local sheriff from a small town somewhere on the Ohio river, claiming that the picture there-in was the face of suspected serial killer Edward Rulofson, a man who had been accused of several deaths along the Ohio and Mississippi river.

The killer could also have been a man named Harold Hetsy, also believed to be operating along the river as a traveling medicine man.

Either way the name didn't matter because the photo had been provided by a 'helpful witness' aboard a showboat traveling through those parts. This witness, a member of the theatre company, claimed that he had proof that the man in the photograph was the serial killer whose deeds had been slowly brought to the attention of the nation.

To his shock Arte found that he was staring at a photo of himself. Taken when he was no more than 18, staring stoically at the camera in his most favored costume from his show boating days.

Baffled, angered, and most of all disappointed at the ignominious end to the evening Arte turned toward the girls, hoping to say something that might salvage the friendships that had begun.

Before he could utter a word something hard and metal clanged against his head, swung with an inexpert hand. It stunned him, and hurt like hell, and he shouted a protest before he moved his hand to protect his skull. A feminine grunt of frustration greeted him and the object, his own cane he realized, was swung again, this time at the other side of his head. Clearly whichever of the girls that had hit him the first time had overcome their hesitation.

Arte saw a blast of white light, then nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

1843

On the Ohio River

Aboard the Monica II

Their first show had been a smash hit. They'd sold out the eighty seats in their tiny theatre for every performance, and had added afternoon matinées so that they could fit the townspeople that insisted on giving them their money, into the theatre. Even at 'standing room only' there wasn't enough room to fit all those that requested a ticket.

"There can't possibly _be _this many people in this town..." One of the tumblers had remarked from behind the curtain after he had nearly landed on a group of children placed so close to the stage they were practically on it.

"Many of them are repeat customers." Anna had remarked in passing, headed out to the stage for her solo number. As soon as she appeared, glittering in the spot light, Sandy started the intro music for her song, bringing an abrupt end to the thundering applause that greeted her. Not out of cruelty, or jealousy of course, but necessity. If they waited for the applause every time, the show would run three hours instead of the already dragging hour and a half.

It hadn't taken long for the cast to start developing acts to add to the show, but Anna's husband Joseph had vetoed every one. They would be added later, as other acts were removed, but the show would not be lengthened. A short show brought in a large audience, and allowed for two or more shows in a day. They were making more money than they had anticipated. And a showman knew, never lay everything you have before the audience. Always leave them wanting more.

While each act was delightful, adding its own kind of charm, the highlight of the evening was always the farcical drama. By far the longest act, even longer than Sandy's dramatic soliloquy from Hamlet, the melodrama was a riot of action and romance, the classic clash of good and evil with a good deal of over acting and clownish prat falls thrown in.

It had been written by Joseph Unger himself, and though most of his theatre company found the man to be distant, oppressive and overbearing, they had to agree that he was a fairly brilliant artist. So far, every performance of their melodrama had the audience literally rolling in the aisles.

The basic plot surrounded the young maiden Elizabeth, who diligently looked after her ailing parents while praying nightly that her love would come along...some day... The maiden was of course played by Analise Unger.

After the introduction of the heroin, one of the cast, playing a narrator would cry out tremulously that a dangerous criminal had been spotted in the area. On stage Elizabeth would begin fretting away in her cabin, knowing there was little she could do to protect her poor parents, all alone.

The first character to arrive on the scene was a dashing police constable, played of course by Joseph Unger, who instantly falls in love with Elizabeth, but his gruff exterior seems to repel her. None the less she is grateful to know that the constable is about and offers to share a meal with him.

However every bite the constable attempts to take is interrupted by knocks on the door. First concerned neighbors, then some of the constable's men, and finally the knock sounds and who is at the door but the dastardly villain himself. As the strongest actor in the cast, Sandy had secured that role and was easily the highlight of every scene, hamming it up and utilizing every villain mannerism he had ever seen used on the stage.

There followed a fight scene, wherein the villain temporarily drives off the hero, and remains in the cabin to eat the meal the hero should have been eating, menacing Elizabeth. But of course the hero recovers and returns, drives off the villain finally and instead of enjoying the meal, enjoys a romantic kiss with the heroine.

In the distance the villain can be seen moaning and holding his stomach. Elizabeth ironically, it turns out, is a terrible cook.

There the play ended to thunderous applause.

As it was almost always the second to last act of the evening Sandy's departure was usually critical, allowing him just enough time to rush to change and scramble to the organ to play the final song.

For the first five weeks, following their premiere performance, each town welcomed them gladly with open arms, sold out every night of the week, and begged them to stop on their return trip up the Ohio river.

Each act went like clockwork and the melodrama at the end was always a smash hit. Yet, Joseph Unger never seemed fully satisfied with it. Always tweaking minute aspects here and there, he went to Sandy one afternoon with a pair of epees in his hands. Without much warning he tossed one to the curly-haired youth, then brought his own to bare and took the fighting stance.

Sandy had never seen an epee in his life, any and all stage fighting in his career had consisted of fisticuffs and handy pistol duels. The light weight, thin metal pole in his hand was nothing more than an ineffective cane until Joseph Unger stepped towards him with one foot, caused the blade of his weapon to whistle through the air, and opened a cut on Sandy's voluminous sleeve.

An instant later the young man copied the stance Unger had modeled, and his first lesson in fencing began.

Over the next week any spare moment that Sandy had was spent practicing the new art. Not, at first, out of a desire to improve himself, but out of necessity. He had learned to keep himself armed at all times, as Joseph Unger took great joy in surprising him at all hours, impromptu swashbuckling springing up all over the Monica II.

By the end of the week the messy brawl between the villain and hero had become a rough, but daring sword fight, ending with the villain run through and dying on stage.

As the weeks continued Sandy's ability with the blade grew by leaps and bounds, and the fight between the two men became more and more real on stage. Some nights one or the other bore small cuts on the arms, or hand.

Analise watched it happening, frightened at how quickly it was escalating, but knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. Her first and only attempt at talking her husband out of what he saw as a fun new game, had ended with him flying into a rage before he stormed out of their cabin. She begged Sandy to put an end to it, finally stressing her concerns so vehemently that Sandy agreed to try to change the act the following night.

The attempt proved almost fatal.

When the villain threw down his epee at the start of the fight scene, daring the hero to prove his manly worth and fight with his fists, Unger drew a small pistol none of the cast had seen before. A double-barreled derringer, the weapon was bulky but easily deadly at so close a range. Still Sandy found it hard to believe that Unger would have actually carried a loaded weapon onto the stage. When he advanced on Unger, however, the top barrel exploded, a ball driving through the stage floor, casting sawdust and splinters in a small circle.

The audience gasped, the children tittering excitedly. Those that had seen previous performances were delighted with the dramatic new twist. Sandy finally took up the epee, and as the fight drew to a close, the response from the audience was mixed. Some had begun to cheer for the villain without realizing.

After the evening's show ended Unger had cornered Sandy long enough to deliver a single message, "Don't change the script, boy. It upsets the writer."

As Unger's behavior continued to become more and more erratic, the fighting scenes more violent, Anna and Sandy began to conclude that not only did Unger know about their unforeseen love for one another. He was already enacting his revenge.

* * *

1874

Cincinatti, Ohio

"You killed him, Hannah!"

"Oh...hardly, Louise."

"You're shaking, give me that and sit down." The younger of the two women, took the cane and leaned it against the table before she guided the woman in the blue dress onto a stool.

"H-he's awfully still..." Hannah McGuff said after a moment, her hands still shaking. The adrenaline, fear and unexpected anger had guided her motions until that moment, with a surety that she hadn't expected to feel. Now, as the rush wore off, and she got a better look at the otherwise charming gentleman who was now bleeding on the library floor, she began to doubt herself.

"You hit him twice, sister dear, are you surprised?"

Hannah moaned and leaned forward, dropping her head into her hands. She felt as though she might weep. "It was all I could think of. I saw that dreadful photo again and then I looked at his face..."

Quietly Louise Johnson approached the prone body, and after a moment she lifted the hem of her skirt and tapped a pointed toe against the man's arm. There was no response and she withdrew her booted foot, looking to her older sister, her eyes wide.

"We must call the police..."

"Of course." Miserably Hannah nodded, holding a hand over her stomach, certain she would soon vomit. The minute her sister turned to leave however the same hand lurched out and she said, "No. No, wait Louise."

With a sigh the younger, brown-eyed woman turned. "Why? Clearly he's the man in the photograph. We've been looking at that photograph all our lives...we know it's him."

"Yes but..." Hannah made a face and stood carefully, still holding her stomach as she moved, bent at the waist back to the desk holding the newspaper. She stared at the very young, happily smiling face in the photo. From her early childhood she had read a cold, calculating sort of hate in those dark, sparkling eyes. The very same eyes, she realized, that had been charming her all evening long.

But she hadn't been charmed by a conman that evening. The man who introduced himself as Artemus Gordon had been warm, openly honest, and sincere.

Louise moved behind her sister, putting her hands on the older woman's taut shoulders. After a moment of silence she sighed and dropped her arms around her sister's neck, pressing her cheek against Hannah's, and hugging her shoulders gently.

Both women gasped and straightened when the unconscious man's head moved a fraction of an inch before his once peaceful face was marred with a deep wince. All movement of his head ceased then, and as both women unknowingly held their breath, his brown eyes opened and he stared at the ceiling.

Louise was already eyeing the cane, leaning against the table across the aisle. Hannah had begun to tremble again, but Louise was determined to pick up where Hannah had left off if need be. After a few minutes of deep breaths and staring, the man calling himself Gordon tried to push himself up by his elbows.

As his head left the floor, both women could see the small puddle of blood he left behind, and the patch of matted hair on the back of his head and Hannah cried out softly, her hands going to her mouth as tears leapt to her eyes.

The sound drew the man's attention, but as he snapped his head in their direction the ill-timed move overwhelmed him. He swayed, his eyes rolled back, and a moment later he was once more slumped and still on the floor.

"This is insane." Hannah said a moment later, her voice rising in pitch as she stood, pacing away from the stool, wiping the tears from her eyes. "All of our lives we were told that our mother was killed by the man in that photo. That he stole our mother's affections, that he...he..., then he attacked our father when he tried to save our mother. Louise, you've studied mankind, you've always been more interested than I in the history of criminology. In anthropology and the whys and wherefores. You would know..."

Hannah drew her younger sister closer holding her hands in her own and asked, "Could a man so heartless and cruel, so thoroughly evil, be the same man who so graciously entertained us both this evening?"

"Hannah, dearest, I-"

"Did you see his face when he first entered the main room of the library?" Hannah asked her sister.

Louise shook her head.

"He looked just like we did. Like he'd finally cracked the secret of King Tut's Tomb, and stood in front of the world's greatest collection of treasures. He was marveled and stunned. Clearly he's a scholar of some kind, a man passionate about knowledge and discovery and science and the arts."

"You begin to sound like you like him." Louise said, her face reflecting her disgust.

"Louise!" Hannah scolded, pulling her hands away. "No..."

"You're making me sick, Hannah."

"I can admire him without desiring him, Louise. Start thinking your age, will you?"

"He's the same man in the wanted poster, Hannah."

The blue-eyed woman sighed quietly and studied the face lying before her. "Perhaps..."

"Ugh..."

"It's just so bizarre." Hannah said, then stood and moved to where Mr. Gordon lay, quietly searching his pockets until she found a white linen handkerchief. She carefully lifted his head and placed the cloth against the damp spot on the back of his head, then let his skull rest against the floor again, the weight of his head, hopefully enough to put pressure on the wound and slow the already sluggish bleeding. "This man showing up out of nowhere. That he would choose us out of a crowd..."

Louise sighed. "You asked me to think anthropologically? Killers are killers. If he preyed on a woman once, why shouldn't he do it again? Perhaps he chose us because we look like the type of woman he enjoys victimizing."

"How morbid!"

"You asked me-!"

"Yes I know. Perhaps because I enjoyed his company, I didn't want to hear the answer...I still don't." Hannah admitted.

"You're letting girlish fantasies, for which you are far too old, get in the way of logic, my dear Mrs. McGuff." Louise said finally, her voice taking on a note of maturity for the first time that evening.

Hannah was silent for a long moment, her face reflecting the conflict warring in her mind. A ghost from a forgotten past had reared its ugly head, and worse, taken the shape of a man Hannah had begun to, yes, fantasize about just a little.

Finally she said, "Shall you call the officer, or shall I?"

"Niether...please." A voice gasped from the floor, and both women jumped, their eyes snapping toward the man rolling onto his side, and gamely making the effort to rise.

With a rustle of skirts Louise made for the cane but stopped at the sound of Gordon's voice again. "And don't hit me..." He threw his hand up, the other clamped on his head over the kerchief that had already begun to stick to the drying blood in his hair. "You'll be further damaging government property...your taxes will be a nightmare."

Louise looked at the cane in her hand, perplexed, and Hannah took a step toward the man trying to rise. A flash of the cane moving in front of her legs kept her from getting any closer to Gordon, and Louise gave her sister an extra warning glance just to be sure.

Arte managed, finally to sit upright, and despite the room spinning and his head bursting into a hundred pieces, he felt marginally better than the first time he had awakened.

"I didn't know the government was _issuing _canes-" Louise began, accusingly.

"Not the cane, ME!" Arte growled, the sudden change in volume reignited the fires that had begun to die in his head.

"You!?" Both girls demanded in unison.

"Yes..." Arte sighed through his teeth.

"You...work for the government?" Louise asked, not believing a word of it.

"Yes." Arte bit out.

"As a waiter, a professor or some other occupation we haven't seen- Oh I see." Louise sparked, spinning the cane in one hand as if she had been born with it there. "You're a spy, right? And an assassin or is that extra?" She asked facetiously, then looked to her sister who was more perturbed now than upset, and mostly at Louise. Ignoring the look, the younger woman pressed on. "You see how quickly and easily he lies, Hannah."

"Who hit me?"

"You are a criminal sir...a-and under citizen's arrest.." Louise charged, pointing the base of the cane at Arte as she squared her shoulders.

"_Who_ hit me?"

"I did, Mr. Gordon." Hannah said softly.

"Because of the photo?"

Hannah didn't respond, clenching her jaw, no longer sure of anything.

"I would have much preferred a simple accusing question, or perhaps an outraged slap across the face. Caving in my skull...twice...was a bit much don't you think?"

"You're a killer!" The younger woman interrupted.

"I'm a member of the Secret Service." Arte responded, glaring back at Louise.

He'd heard only a small part of their conversation the second time he'd awakened, but none of it had done anything to explain the attack, or dissuade him from his opinion that he had been swoonhoggled by two kookoo birds, recently escaped from an insane asylum with an unnaturally well stocked library.

"Why did you lie, Mr. Gordon?" Hannah's quiet voice broke through again.

Arte sighed and closed his eyes. "You don't believe me now. Would you have believed me then?"

Louise and Hannah shared a look.

"IS this your photo?" Hannah finally asked and Arte opened the corner of one eye to look at her.

Carefully he leaned forward, starting the long process that would eventually see him to his feet. Each step was painful and plagued by dizziness, but he made it upright. He was grateful that neither of the women had offered to help him. The prickly way he was feeling at the moment he wasn't sure of how he would've reacted.

One hand still pressed against the kerchief on his head, Arte carefully moved to the table and leaned on it, looking over the photo again. Instinctively his shoulders were already hunching protectively, and he even spared a glance over his shoulder to make sure that Louise, and the cane were nowhere near him.

He looked to the grainy photo and found he was once more staring at himself. 18 years old. The photo had been cropped and enlarged, but it was clearly him. Taken from the group photograph shot in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a special studio. He'd been the only one to smile.

"Yes..." He answered, then threw up a hand, flinching backward in case his admission had prompted another preemptive strike. "But I'm not either of these...people." Arte danced a fingertip over the two aliases that had been offered by whoever had created the wanted poster. "If you need proof I can get it, even so far as...perhaps arranging a meeting with...with um..."

His head had started to pound and Arte soon found himself sitting, leaning heavily against the tilted table that displayed the newspaper.

Louise still stood a good distance away, the cane in one hand, while both hands perched on her hips. "A meeting with..." She prompted, not dissuaded in the least when Arte nearly fell over. Hannah, on the other hand, had immediately lunged toward the older man, guiding him to the stool that he would have otherwise missed. The minute he was seated however, she backed away from him.

"The president?" Arte offered, hoping that the answer fit whatever he had been saying before. He vaguely recalled the point he had been trying to make.

"Ha! The President! He's deranged and he's a killer, Hannah. You did right to whack him over the head, and we should do it again, then call the for the police." Louise whispered harshly at her sister, still gripping the cane, ready to swing.

Hannah said nothing, watching as the wounded man leafed through the newspaper compendium, looking at the date at the top of the page, then at the printer's mark at the bottom. He finally flipped to the front cover, long enough to read the name of the newspaper itself before he returned to the page with his photo on it.

Arte flipped backwards, feeling himself falling yet again into the vortex of the past. Went back to the month of April and found nothing, then went forward to the month of December.

He couldn't remember where it all happened really. There was nothing about a showboat bursting mysteriously into flames. Just the wanted poster, printed dutifully and in good faith.

He'd seen the photo plenty of times. He'd kept a copy of it with him for the longest time, though it was long gone now.

Hannah watched as the man stopped turning pages. He had not made the connection. Clearly he didn't yet understand.

After a moment she reached to the back of her neck and pulled at a gold chain lying under her high collar. She grasped the locket that normally rested between her breasts and opened it, sweeping a thumb over the glass that protected the tiny, faded picture.

"Mr. Gordon..." She prompted, holding the locket out, the chain tightly wound around her fingers, the locket swinging, opened, back and forth beneath her clenched fist. "Do you know this woman?"

Arte studied Hannah's face at first, knowing it was familiar to him. Compared to the face in the locket there was no doubt of a relation between the two. Even Louise, whom Arte realized now, was Hannah's sister, looked like the woman smiling at him from the gold frame.

Of course he recognized her. He had forgotten how young she was. How young they both were.

"This is a photograph of Analise Unger..." He said, watching the ladies exchange glances.

Hannah took a step back, retrieving the locket as she did, clutching it to her chest as she took a deep breath then barely whispered. "Did you kill her?"

Louise had the cane raised, ready to strike. She was frightened, and her sister looked close to fainting.

Had he killed Analise with his own hands? No.

Did his foolhardy, selfish love for her; his teenaged stupidity and bravado; had his every action in the spring and summer of 1843 been the cause for her death?

"Yes."

Louise hadn't expected the admission. She had expected a protesting 'no' followed by a lengthy explanation. She found herself frozen, the cane still held over her head, tears coming to her eyes as she stared at the man claiming to be the killer of her mother. The man they had been made to fear for most of their lives. The boogy man of their childhood.

"Why...Mr. Gordon..." Hannah breathed. "Why?"

* * *

1843

Aboard the Monica II

On the Mississippi River

It had begun with the fencing 'lessons' and went from there. Sandy was run ragged from sun up to sun down. Every task was delegated to him and each cast member told to report to him if anything went wrong in their cabins, with their costumes, or their music. The theatrical tasks alone were oppressive, but Sandy was also soon ordered to maintenance tasks. If supplies were to be loaded, he was to be there. If painting or scraping had to be done to the hull, he was to be there. One evening he was ordered to shovel coal on the tug, and was left to the job for four days.

He took the selective treatment for a week before he simply refused to do it. As a result, all of his acts but one were pulled from the show, and replaced by others. The only thing that remained was the sword fight in the melodrama, only this time the villain was required to wear a mask that hid his face for the entire performance.

His photo had been removed from the playbill and soon he was told that the showboat, despite its continued success, could no longer afford to pay him. He was welcome to stay on for room and board, but as far as the 'captain' was concerned, Sandy no longer existed.

There were no real secrets on board and most of the cast had a fair idea as to why Sandy had become the object of Joseph Unger's hatred.

It took Sandy a few weeks to realize that he wasn't the only target.

Analise too had be receiving her own punishment. She was distant as they moved from the Ohio River to the Mississippi, avoiding Sandy when possible.

When he finally cornered her outside her cabin on a night when Joseph had drunk his dinner and gone to bed early, Anna finally admitted why she had been avoiding him. The admission was followed with a display of the colorful bruises that she had been hiding under her clothes.

She was convinced that she deserved it. And, she told Sandy, there were things he didn't know. That he didn't understand. "He's trying to drive you from the boat. You should go. You should find another show boat. You're a fine actor, you deserve to be seen."

"You deserve to live." Sandy told her, and the four words stuck with her for a day and a half before she agreed to meet with Sandy on the shore after a performance. It was there among the reeds, seated in a leaking rowboat that they decided to escape together.

They worked out a plan, agreed on the time and place and by the next morning their escape was in motion.

Both had agreed that if Sandy left the boat the pressure would be reduced. Joseph would feel he had finally won, and would no longer hound Anna as he had been. If they let enough time pass, if Anna spent enough nights in her husband's bed, Unger hopefully would let his guard down and in a month Sandy was to meet her, and Analise's two-year old daughter, Hannah, at a certain place and time.

For four weeks Sandy followed the progress of the Monica II, picking up day jobs where he could, but never staying in one place more than a fortnight. He managed to survive, learning, expanding, and maturing in that month of relative solitude.

He'd asked himself many times if he truly loved Anna. If he had loved her, or merely desired her. If the pain that his actions had essentially caused her, had been worth what they shared. Did she actually love him? Or was he just an escape from her husband?

He knew his questions would be answered when Anna met him. But at the appointed date and time, she never appeared.

The Monica II did a week's run in the town, but Anna never showed.

With no money in his pockets, three days without food and nothing but rags on his back Sandy could wait no longer. As the Monica II pulled away from the small town, headed further down river, Sandy stayed, found employment in a budding newspaper and printing business and started to live under the name Charley Gordon.

He liked the last name. He'd picked it up long ago, but the first name had been a mistake. It didn't fit, he thought, but he had given it to his employer on a whim, and knew changing it would probably get him fired.

For five months Charley worked in the small town, helping to build the print shop into a booming business that soon printed not only it's own newspaper, but three others from surrounding townships. Along with circulars, posters, pamphlets and even small books.

* * *

1874

Cincinnati, Ohio

Hannah had asked him, "Why?"

Arte took a deep breath and stood. He was still fighting dizziness and nausea, and the bleeding had slowed but not stopped. His evening had been ruined, demons of his past dredged up, and he had two emotionally wounded women waiting for an answer that he knew he couldn't give them.

"You don't want the answers-"

"What!?" Louise interrupted, angrily.

"Whatever you were told about your mother, whatever you grew up believing...be content knowing that. It's far less ugly than the truth, believe me."

"Less ugly?" Hannah demanded quietly. "Our father told us you killed our mother in cold blood. That you molested and murdered her, then tried to kill him too."

"Molest-" Arte felt his knees give out and he sat back down, the nausea now coming from an entirely different source. Outraged tears flooded his eyes, his body and mind rejecting the accusation instantaneously. "I loved your mother. Dearly." He swore, his voice quaking. "I tried- I tried to save her... I could never..." He shook his head, his fingers clutching the edge of the table so hard that it rattled.

* * *

1843

Mississippi

The advertisements for the coming arrival of the showboat The Monica II arrived two weeks in advance of the boat, and the man calling himself Charley Gordon nearly ripped the proof copy in half when he saw it. In the months that he had been working in the small town the Monica II could easily have made it all the way to New Orleans, and was probably now on its return trip.

For two weeks, he agonized over the decision. Should he buy a ticket and attend a show? If he did he would of course have to disguise himself in some way. But would Analise want to see him? Would she even be aboard? Joseph Unger was still captain according to the flier he had printed, and the cast photo taken in Pittsburgh hadn't changed.

The day the Monica II docked in their town everyone from the office went to see their welcoming number, but Sandy remained. He cringed at the badly played pipe organ, and tried to quell the thespian in him that reared its ugly head at the sounds of the voices of the cast.

Sandy waited until the second to last performance before he finally decided. He had begun to learn how to make wigs, fake mustaches and beards, and other tricks of the trade in his spare time aboard the Monica II, and the hobby had stuck with him. He had already created several wigs and other pieces that were stored in the small apartment he rented above the stable.

The night for which he had purchased a ticket, Sandy donned an old man's wig that he had finished only a week ago, making himself up to look like a kindly codger of seventy. With his best suit on, and a cane for appearances, Sandy stepped aboard the Monica II one final time.

Most of the cast members were the same. The show had changed, some acts replacing others, but the melodrama at the end was still the highlight. The parts of the ailing parents had been expanded, and the scale of the fight between the villain and the hero greatly reduced.

But Anna did not play the iingénue. She was, in fact, not on stage at all. Joseph Unger opened and closed the show and the audience happily shook his hand as they left.

Knowing the boat well, as the theatre emptied, Sandy left the large room via a side door and disappeared below, walking the cabin deck. He had just put his hand on the door to Anna's cabin when he heard her voice behind him.

"Are you lost, sir?" She asked, genially.

When Sandy turned to face her, her smile broadened, but it was the look a young woman gives an old man when she is reminded of her dear grandfather. She hadn't recognized him, not yet. He recognized her with one major addition.

Her belly well-rounded, Sandy realized with a start that Anna was very pregnant.

* * *

1874

Cincinnati, Ohio

"With me..." Louise said quietly. "But I was born only a week later...if your memory is correct..."

Arte shook his head carefully and put out a hand. "I've never suspected that you were mine, Louise." He said quietly. "I loved your mother, and we had shared a night together. But that was seven months before you were born, not nine. Your mother never told me she was pregnant."

"Joseph Unger was a dark and twisted man...though he professed to love us." Hannah said quietly. "He was always angry, just under the surface. I always knew, during the Indian wars, and then the War Between the States, that Daddy was far more suited to that life, than ours. He was in the Army from the day I turned 10 to the day that he died, Mr. Gordon."

"At Gettysburg..." Louise offered.

After a moment Hannah stood and walked to the newspaper compendium, staring at the black and white photo with her arms crossed over her chest. A second later she grabbed the top of the page and ripped it from the book, before slamming the giant volume closed. She took the page and pushed it under Arte's hanging head.

"Who killed her, Mr. Gordon?" She demanded. "You say you didn't? Who then?"

Arte looked at the page but didn't take it.

* * *

1843

Mississippi

The little girl, Hannah, came running up from behind her mother, giggling until she caught sight of the older gentleman and quieted, hiding just behind her mother's skirts.

"I...yes, I seem to be." Sandy finally managed to answer her question, smiling at the little girl, then straightening, too swiftly he realized, for the age he was playing. Anna's smile faltered a little, her head tilting to the side as she took Hannah's hand and brushed past the older gentleman. She put her hand to the doorknob then turned.

"Give me a moment to settle my daughter for the evening and I can...show you the way up top." She offered. For a moment she paused, her hand leaving the door knob and rising, as if she was considering touching his face but she stopped herself and ducked into her room.

When she returned five minutes later she had a wrap over her shoulders and happily took Sandy's arm when he offered it. They walked ten paces before Anna turned and ripped his mustache away.

"Sandy..." She whispered, smiling, before she pressed her lips to his, and despite the sting of the hastily removed hair piece, Sandy kissed her back.

As soon as they broke apart, Anna, flushed from the contact, pushed the mustache back into place and took his arm as if nothing had happened, guiding him down the hall and toward the stairs.

"Anna...wait. What happened? Why...how?"

At the base of the stairs Anna stopped walking and started to reach for the mustache again. Sandy smiled but put up a hand to stall her, and gently peeled the mustache off himself. They kissed again before Anna whispered.

"I wasn't able to get away. I had no way to tell you. I could only hope you wouldn't give up on me. And then...then I was too big to get away. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before but I...I couldn't be sure." Anna paused, then grabbed his face, and he was breathless with his lips pressed against hers. "I can't tell you what this means. I despaired of ever seeing you again. I was certain...but...it doesn't matter. You have to get off this boat before Joseph sees you. You should probably leave the river..." She warned.

Then there were footsteps, and he was hastily pressing the mustache into place.

Anna started jabbering directions at him, as if he were still the lost old man, and both froze when Joseph Unger paused at the base of the stairs. Cold, calculating blue eyes came to rest first on Sandy, seeing a harmless old man at first glance, then noticing the mustache that was mildly askew. He shifted to his wife, to the flush on her cheeks, the way her chest rose and fell, breathing harder than she should have been.

It was the shine on her lips that gave them away. The spirit gum that Sandy had used to affix the mustache had transferred to her normally barren mouth.

Joseph stepped closer to the stranger and tugged at the mustache, then at the hair. He recognized Sandy, but there was no expected flash of anger in his eyes. Something deeper went very still in the man as he considered the situation, then pulled the small derringer he had been carrying on his person since the performance he nearly shot Sandy on stage.

"The day I first caught you with my wife I should have challenged you to a duel, but I knew you had no skills, and where is the honor in dying a talentless hack. Now...perhaps you've maintained a little of that knowledge. We're going to the roof, Anna dear. You'll bring the sabers in very short order, or your dear Sandy will be shot through the head and tossed into the river."

Then Joseph Unger stopped speaking and thrust the point of his gun into Sandy's stomach, pulling the cane from the younger man's grasp before he shoved him toward the stairs.


	4. Chapter 4

1843

Mississippi

As they climbed to the first deck Sandy kept his hands up, very aware of the muzzle of the gun pressing against his back. He was also aware of how empty the boat felt and realized with a start that he had chosen perhaps the worst possible night to come aboard. The second to last performance was also the night the cast and crew usually had off. As most of them were landlubbers by nature, every man, woman, and child would take advantage of the evening and go ashore, making use of the shops, taverns, inns, etc.. The bigger the river town, the more people would be gone from the boat.

As they passed it, Sandy could see that the theatre was dark, the stage hands already through with their sweeping. The cast would likely soon be ashore too. There was no one to recognize him, no one to see that Unger had him at gunpoint. The boat was slowly going dark, and soon there would only be the moon and the stars to witness a fight that Sandy wasn't entirely certain he would survive.

He had expected to hear the word 'epees' come from Unger's mouth. 'Sabers' had sent a chill down his spine. They were rounding the corner after climbing the stairs to the third deck when Sandy considered the risks of simply jumping overboard. The depth of the river, the current, Unger's aiming ability with the less than accurate derringer...he worked through the factors, considering making a short run to the end of the deck then launching himself over. The minute he shifted his weight, however, Unger grabbed his neck with a long-fingered hand, pressing his thumb into the skin between Sandy's spine and collarbone.

"You always did strike me as a coward, Sandy. A coward and a blaggard."

"If I'm a coward, Unger, what do you call a man who beats his wife black and blue."

"Tolerant...I could have thrown her in the river and been within my rights."

They continued walking, rounding the corner before Sandy saw what he had hoped he would see. The pipe organ, sitting at the aft of the boat, just below the narrow set of stairs that led to the roof.

They still hadn't repaired the highest pitched pipe, and he could see that it was sitting catty-whompas as always, in its place. Sandy stopped walking, long enough to feel Unger butt up against him. He raised his arm and threw his elbow back, hastily striking at Unger before he lunged for the small pipe, ripping it from its seating and whirling to bring it to bare on the captain.

But the gun was there. His hopes that Unger might have dropped it were dashed and Sandy let his hands drop, the pipe clattering to the deck before he was gestured to take the stairs ahead of the now peeved man, wiping at a drop of blood coming from the corner of his mouth.

Unger ordered him to stop once he had reached the middle of the roof top and Sandy watched as the older man stripped off his coat, managing to keep the derringer pointed at him at all times.

Sandy took advantage of the delay, also pulling off his coat and the rest of his disguise.

"That was clever. It would seem that my chores served you well in the past six months." Unger gloated, once more smiling pleasantly as if they were traveling companions just meeting at a stage depot. It might have been an interesting conversation if Unger hadn't been there to kill him. "Your disguise...very well made. The wig especially shows excellent craftmanship. You'll need more and more of those disguises in the future I'd wager."

"This is stage makeup, Unger. Not a disguise." Sandy spat, his eyes continuously drawn to the end of the gun barrel.

"You are right about that. A disguise is more than just fake hair and makeup isn't it?" Unger asked, moving so that his back was no longer to the stairs up which he expected his wife to come at any moment. "When you disguise yourself you change more than your appearance. Your walk for example, the way you carry yourself. Your voice, your mannerisms, your personality. All of these things change."

"Your past changes too." Sandy hedged, familiarizing himself once again with the perimeter of the roof of the boat, marked by the one foot tall, white washed railing that served as little more than a decorative icing to the top of the craft.

Unger chuckled, then let out a full-throated laugh. He'd rotated enough now to watch both Sandy and the stairs, and one look at them had been enough to bring the man delight. Sandy glanced through the twilight and saw Anna standing at the top of the stair, two sabers in her hands, dangling from her fingertips.

"Your _future_ can change, boy. Your past...can only be hidden." Unger kept the gun pointed at Sandy as he approached Anna, his eyes focused on hers. "And I intend for your past to haunt you."

Unger looked back to Sandy for a brief moment. "If you survive this, that is." He then looked back to his wife and took one of the sabers from her. "Are you frightened, my dear Analise? Are you afraid for your lover? For the one who soiled you? Do you want him to live?"

Anna didn't dare answer. She was trembling, and felt sick. She couldn't move. She had considered a hundred courageous acts that might save Sandy, that might end this nightmare, that might see herself, her daughter, and her unborn child off this hellish craft, and as far as possible from the beast she had once married.

She felt like a fool, like a frightened, hopeless little fool, and her eyes finally met Sandy's in the darkness. I'm sorry, she tried to say, I'm sorry that I failed.

Unger saw her fear and found it delicious. He had wondered if Sandy's reappearance would grant his wife the final courage she had lacked in the past six months. He was happy to see her still cowed.

Defeating the upstart youngster would keep her that way. "Go ahead then. Deliver his death unto him." Unger commanded, then watched as his pregnant wife trudged across the roof with the second saber.

"I'm so sorry, Sandy. I'm so terribly sorry. You should never have come aboard again."

"Anna-"

"You don't understand what he's done. I never expected to see you alive. I thought you would have been caught by now. Or worse. You have to make new disguises, and use them to get away, get very far away."

"Anna, what are you talking about?"

"He did it as soon as you left the boat, Sandy. He-"

"Stalling, Sandy? You haven't been practicing, have you?" Unger called from thirty feet away, already relaxed in the fighting stance, his blade singing through the air.

"Anna, can you get to the tug boat?"

"To the tug-"

"Get to the tugboat, and set us adrift. Cut the lines, set them on fire, anything. But get us away from the bank, can you do that!?"

Anna could feel Sandy's anxious hands digging into bruises that Joseph had left a day ago. She could hardly see his face through the tears that welled in her eyes, but she nodded. She didn't understand why, nor did she know how she could do it, but she would try.

Unger watched as Anna and the whelp separated, his wife angrily wiping tears from her face, passing him and heading for the stairs.

"Anna dear...aren't you going to stay and watch?" Unger taunted, looking at her over his shoulder.

She froze, her hand on the stair railing, sobbing still, when she turned she fixed a hateful glare on her husband and blurted, "I have a child to care for. I won't watch you kill each other."

Then she was descending the stairs, her sobs fading.

"A fine...dramatic...way to exit, don't you think, Sandy?" Unger asked, approaching until he was ten feet away from his adversary.

The blade was heavier than an epee, and felt awkward in his hand, but a few practice swings and Sandy found he was quickly acclimated to the balance of the sword. It was a fine weapon, and well honed. "Is that all that this is for you, Unger? A drama playing out on a grotesque stage?"

Their first clash happened seconds later, the blades flying and careening together, Sandy remembering each answering perry and slash just in time to avoid sustaining any cuts. When they separated their heart rates had skyrocketed, and Sandy could feel the adrenaline singing through his veins. He could see the violent gleam in Unger's eyes.

Moments later Unger attacked again, sweeping his blade in low. Sandy leapt over the deadly arch, swinging his own blade at the tang, catching the back of the older man's hand with the flat of his weapon.

He saw Unger's blade waver, then steady. He hadn't swung hard enough, and that opening wasn't likely to be presented to him again. Sandy backed away hurriedly, his eyes wide.

"You haven't been practicing, but perhaps you haven't needed to." Unger gasped, straightening out of his hunched position. "Come then...let's see an attack from you."

Sandy considered for a second then stepped in, fainting an arrow attack, then sweeping his body to the left, the blade to his right, batting away the parry that Unger presented, and aiming the point of his weapon at Unger's right shoulder. He felt the resistance of cloth and skin, then stepped away, rolling his shoulder under Unger's final strike and backing nearly off the roof. His heels hit the low railing and he windmilled his arms until he had his balance, edging around Unger. The older man, mildly stunned, inspected the damage done to his shoulder, a surprised and pleased smile coming to his lips.

"Devillish, Sandy. Truly devillish."

* * *

Get us away from the bank, Sandy had said. The first thing Anna thought of was the fire axe attached to the wall on the river deck, intended in part for precisely that purpose. Anna rushed to the heavy tool, dragged it from the wall, then tried to heft it over her shoulder, to swing it down at the thick ropes joining them with the dock.

The minute she raised it she felt something painful snap in her belly, and cried out, collapsing. It could have been a muscle reacting to the strain, or something worse, but as she lay in agony on the deck she felt a warm rush of liquid between her legs and knew her water had broken. The baby was coming.

Sandy was facing death above her. There was no one else on board.

She wouldn't be able to lift the axe.

There had to be another way.

* * *

The second and third attacks Sandy had brought against Unger had ended without injury to either man. Other than being primarily stunned that Sandy had managed to land such a blow, Unger seemed in no way affected by the injury now cascading blood down his right arm. He fought on, undeterred and Sandy soon found that his greatest ally was space and obstacles. He'd backed his way to the small building that sat on the rooftop. The square pagoda like box that had once been a lover's hideaway for himself and Anna. Twice its gables and walls had saved his life as he ducked around it.

This tactic was serving also to anger Joseph Unger, who had twice sunk his blade deep into the wood of the small building. Sandy tried each time to take advantage of the delay but had been thwarted the first time by Unger's well-timed dodge, and the second time when Unger reached with his left hand into his jacket and pulled out the derringer.

Sandy saw it in time and managed to duck behind the building as the shot rang out, casting splinters and black powder into the air. With a grunt Unger freed his blade and attacked, the flurry of steel coming at Sandy at twice the speed and ferocity. The younger man nearly lost his blade, and felt Unger's saber cut into his left shoulder and forearm before the showboat captain seemed to exhaust himself, and he retreated.

The cut on Sandy's shoulder was high, and shallow. The slice to his forearm was deeper, and blood was coating the back of his hand. Sandy watched the tiny derringer until Unger put it away again, a smile coming to his lips.

"Do you know what I enjoy about fencing, Sandy?" Unger asked, taking a deep breath as he straightened his back. As if that one breath had been the equivalent of a full night of sleep, he relaxed into the fighting stance, looking entirely refreshed.

Sandy didn't respond, dragging air into his own lungs and reforming a ragged stance of his own. Before he answered his own question Unger attacked, driving Sandy back with a mind numbing repetition of blows until the younger man felt the railing again behind his left boot. He concentrated hard on his balance, his torso dipping, right arm straining to keep Unger's deadly blade away from him.

He knew the pattern of blows was meant to sway him into complacency and he was ready when Unger suddenly stepped back, and tried to drive the blade through. Sandy countered the strike sending the point of Unger's blade into the surface of the roof, brought his foot down on the tang and countered with his own blade, missing the killing blow, but slicing into Unger's side. Sandy's blade then slid harmlessly under the man's arm, and they were face to face, mere inches apart.

"It is...never dull." Unger gasped finally, pain beginning to register on his face. The realization that he had been wounded coming into his eyes for a moment before Sandy saw what looked like victory in the captain's eyes. The explosion of the gun came next. The sound dulled by the density of their bodies, forced so closely together.

Sandy felt the punch to his side, followed by a burn, like a hot poker drilling its way through him. He tried to look down between their bodies to see the gun but Unger held him, one hand tight on his collar, not letting him back away.

Sandy still held the saber, though it was suddenly ten pounds heavier than it had been. He tried to draw it back, heard the hollow sound of the tip dragging across the tar paper of the roof, and Unger shook his head.

"You won't be able to lift it, Sandy." He chided, and waited until he heard the younger man's saber drop to the roof before he nodded sagely and pushed Sandy away from him. The wounded 18-year-old clutched a hand immediately to his side, stumbled back a few steps, then tripped over the low rail and disappeared.

Unger waited for the splash, smiling through heaving breaths. When he heard it he moved to the edge of the roof to make sure that Sandy didn't come back up. It was then that he first noticed the flicker of flames coming from the river deck.

And that the Monica II was no longer moored to the dock.

* * *

The water was cold and hard and cast him quickly into a state of nothing. It was there that he saw his father. Just a brief glimpse, a fading image that he recognized and longed after, but knew he could never reach.

Then his shoulders hit the river bottom, the current dragging him over rocks and sunken logs, jolting him back into awareness until he lashed out with his hands, kicked his legs and struggled back for the surface. He broke into the air almost too late and gasped for oxygen, dragging in a little water and starting a fit of coughing that nearly drowned him.

The Monica II was fully engulfed, drifting without direction down the river. It wouldn't take long for the massive boat to overtake him and Sandy swam for the shore, clinging to a root about the thickness of his arm that jutted out of the water. The constant pain in his side was robbing him of energy and warmth, the river water doing its part to further chill him. As the Monica II passed by him the heat from the inferno was almost welcome.

A second later he remembered Anna, and little Hannah, and broke away from the root to swim after the rudderless showboat. He'd managed three strokes before his arms became leaden, his legs barely moving, listless in the current. Just keeping his head above water took everything he had left...but if Anna was still aboard...burning to death, why struggle to live.

No one would miss him, Sandy thought, a spasm of pain stealing his breath just as he heard a motor behind him.

The chuff of steam, the splash of the river water against the hull. The tug boat, the face of the pilot staring down at him with concern, the fireman hanging off the bow with a long wooden pole, extended towards him. Sandy grabbed the pole and was yanked aboard in a matter of minutes. They lay him down on a pile of canvas and rope and the pilot registered surprise at seeing him again then demanded, "Was there anyone else?"

"Anyone...else?"

"On board the Monica II?"

"Anna.." Sandy said, as if the answer should have been obvious.

"Anna and her daughter are aft, here on the tug. What about her husband?"

Sandy could only shake his head, and soon lost consciousness.

* * *

1874

Cincinnati, Ohio

"You were born a day later." Arte said quietly, watching Louise, whose eyes hadn't left his face since he began talking.

Hannah had begun to watch her sister, instead of looking at the older gentleman, and when Arte's voice had begun to crack she had left to retrieve a glass of water. Not an easy task in a building as voluminous as the library.

By the time she returned Arte had finished speaking and he and Louise sat in the silence of the wee hours of the morning. Hannah gave Gordon the glass, and he accepted it gratefully but didn't drink from it, his eyes searching hers.

"Hannah, your mother and I were taken into that small town and looked after by a surgeon. I was...very ill, and unconscious for days. When I woke I was told that your mother had recovered the morning after we were rescued, and joined the bereft cast and crew of the Monica II in salvaging what they could of her.

I was told that your father had been discovered on the far shore, and that he had taken the tug, along with you, and your mother and your sister, and had gone down river to find other passage for the rest of the cast. When a week had passed and none of them heard from your parents, the cast and crew dispersed, finding their own ways home.

I left, as soon as I was able. I joined a medicine show and stayed away from the river. I realize now that it was those wanted posters she must have been warning me about."

"Our mother was killed only a few months after I was born, Mr. Gordon. Or that was what we had been told all of our lives. I have no memory of her, and Hannah very little. Who-"

"I don't know..." Arte shook his head, running his palms down his thighs to rid them of the sweat that had collected as he relived the memories. His headache had settled into a dull pounding, the wound no longer bleeding, but beginning to itch as the blood dried. "I never knew...I had hoped for the longest time that your mother was still alive. Though, I suspected, living unhappily."

"Very unhappily..." Said a voice, and both women jumped, sucking in surprised breaths as the security officer they knew as Harold Hudson stepped from the shadows. Arte stood, pleased to find that he could do it now without the wave of dizziness overtaking him.

"Sorry to have startled you, ladies." The man said sincerely, his eyes taking in the gentleman with them for a long moment.

"Sergeant Hudson, my apologies to you sir. I know we should have informed you that we were here..." Hannah began but the officer, a man well into his sixties, patted the air kindly and shook his head.

"Mrs. McGuff, I was aware that you and your sister were here, from the very start. I was worried about the both of you, bringing this man with you into the library so late at night and checked in on you, on each of my rounds. It is I that should have made you aware of my presence, far sooner than now. But as I listened to your conversation...forgive me."

Sergeant Hudson had always been exceedingly kind to Hannah and her sister. It was he that had given Hannah the key to the library, and even before then he had paid special attention to both women. At first Hannah had suspected Hudson was attracted to her, especially when he gave her the key. A breach, by any standards, of the contract he fulfilled with the city to look after the new library.

"You, sir. I was fully prepared to haul you in to the authorities until a few moments ago." Hudson said, addressing Artemus next, his eyes still focused on the scrutiny he was giving the younger man. "No...no I don't suppose you're the hardened killer type. Heaven knows I've seen enough of them in my time to recognize them."

The more he spoke the more Arte became aware of the drawl in the man's speech pattern, buried under years spent living in the northern climes, but still there.

"Forgive us, Sergeant Hudson. We've made a right mess of this evening, done dreadful damage to Mr. Gordon's person. We should see him to the hospital...should have hours ago, really. Would you..could you hail us a cab, Sergeant?" Hannah asked finally, reaching for her wrap as she spoke, feeling incredibly foolish.

As if a moment ago she had been bound up in a spell, and Sergeant Hudson's interruption had broken her from it.

Arte found there was nothing he could say. Apologies would mean nothing, rehashing the evening's many mistakes would help no one. He would have given his eye teeth to do it over again. To go back to his youth, even, and...what could he have done. Told his foolish young heart not to love, told Anna not to love him? Would telling Joseph Unger to change his ways, and to love his wife without abusing her, have made a difference?

Finally once again in possession of his cane Arte used it to traverse the hallways, the girls following quietly behind him, supporting one another but not speaking a word.

On the street they watched the early morning activity of the city, the sky still dark and cool. When the cab arrived Hudson helped the ladies into it first. Both sat looking expectantly at Arte.

"I thank you for your concern but I will find all I could possibly need at my train, and I think the night air will do me good." He spoke, trying to be gracious but feeling bitter.

Neither of the women argued, but Louise looked reluctant as the driver whipped the horses, and they pulled away from the curb.

"You're not that steady on your pins, Mr. Gordon. I would wait for me to call another cab then." Hudson said, watching the tuxedoed man closely.

"Sergeant Hudson...you knew their mother?" Arte said, knowing the answer.

"In a round about way, yes." Hudson said. "Before I retired, then took up this job, I was a police detective. And before that a military police officer in the army, and before that a deputy in a small Mississippi town. I was there when the girls lost their mother, though they were too young to know it. I investigated the man who I knew did it, but could never prove it. And when that man moved north with those two little girls trusting blithely in him, I followed. I couldn't let it go."

"They settled here in Cincinnati?" Arte asked.

The gray-haired sergeant nodded, taking his hat off to wipe at the sweat on his forehead, then replacing it. "And so did I. The man...their father, though you wouldn't know it by the way he acted towards them, re-married. Left the girls in the care of their step-mother, and was gone most of the time. I kept an eye on the family. Checked in on Mrs. Unger whenever I could. Saw to it that the girls weren't brought to harm. They grew up faster than I cared to think about but I kept track of them. Kept track of their father too until I learned that he died in the Great War. Worse still as a war hero. Well..." Hudson chided himself, "I suppose he was a hero then. But he didn't start out a hero."

"A man can't change his past." Arte muttered.

Hudson pursed his lips and thought about it for a moment before he nodded. "I suppose not. I know I couldn't shake mine."

"Will you tell them, Hannah and Louise, about their father?" Arte asked, turning at the sound of a horse and hack pulling up to the curbside.

Hudson thought about it, putting his hands on his hips, a man used to bearing the weight of the truth on his shoulders, never able to share the burden. Finally he shook his head. "Nah...not unless they ask me direct. And probably not even then. Them girls have been through a too much in their lives to have to carry that betrayal with them, too."

"You'll look after them?" Arte asked.

"Of course, Mr. Gordon." Hudson promised, then took the hand that Arte had offered. When they parted Hudson opened the door to the hack.

Artemus studied the inside of the cab then shook his head. "I thank you, but...I need to walk. Have a good evening sir and...thank you again."

They parted ways, and Arte could feel the man's gaze following him until he turned the corner at the end of the block.

Arte walked until the sun rose then found his way to The Wanderer, poured himself a glass of wine and sat with it in front of the pot belly stove for an hour, watching the well-tended coals cool. Finally, in the still dim light of dawn, he sat down at his writing desk and began to pen a letter that he wasn't entirely certain he would send.

By the time he finished he realized that he knew of only one place to send it to anyway, and he wrote a second letter, addressing it differently than the first, placing everything in a single envelope.

He took twenty minutes to change, washing the blood from his neck and hair, as best he could without disturbing the fresh scab, then delivered the letter by hand before returning to The Wanderer in time to give the all clear to the engineer. They pulled promptly out of the station at 8:30 that morning.

By 9:00 James West woke feeling refreshed, if still sick. He splashed water on his face and bathed himself with hot water and a washing cloth, shaved carefully, then dressed for a day that would most likely be spent entirely on the train. His smoking jacket, trousers and house slippers would do, he decided and soon found himself drawn by the smells of breakfast to the lounge car.

There hot coffee, eggs, bacon and toast awaited him, along with his bleary eyed partner who sat also in his smoking jacket, staring at a piece of paper ripped out of a newspaper.

Jim was about to make a comment about Arte having a wild night when he noticed the opened bottle of brandy sitting close at hand. Only a few fingers worth were gone from the bottle, but it was odd for his partner to drink his breakfast, even if the brandy was tipped into his morning coffee.

Jim quietly filled his plate, then a cup with the steaming brew, before sitting at the table.

"Morning, Arte." He said, watching his partner.

"Good morning, James." Arte said, distracted for a few more minutes before he folded the sheet of news paper and give his partner a half-hearted smile. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine." Jim said, picking up more and more red flags. There was no plate in front of Arte, yet the food was warm, and freshly made. A man who enjoyed eating as much as he enjoyed cooking would not, under normal circumstances, let a handmade meal pass by without consuming it.

"Are you going to...eat that?" Arte asked, staring right back at Jim, until West looked down to the plate of eggs and bacon.

"Eventually." Jim said, then looked back up.

"I haven't shaved." Arte said, as if helping Jim figure out what was different about him that morning.

Finally Jim asked, "Was she pretty?"

Arte gave him a smile he couldn't quite interpret and said, "They were both pretty."

Jim's eyebrows shot up, and he started to grin in appreciation, but Arte abruptly moved to his feet and left the room with a barely audible, 'Excuse me, Jim.'

As he sat, considering following his partner he heard a distant and very distinct sound, that only served to baffle and concern him further.

Jim waited, picking at his food, and sipping coffee until a half an hour had passed without his partner returning. When he walked down the hall to check on him, Jim found Gordon seated on the floor of his berth with his back against the bed and his eyes closed. A bucket sat in the corner of the room, smelling of vomit.

Quietly Jim took care of the bucket first, cleaning it out, dumping its contents down the toilet.

When he returned to Arte's room with a basin of cold water and a cloth he found that the older man had moved up onto the bed, but still sat, his head in his hand. Jim put the basin on the bedside table, soaked the cloth with cold water, wrung it out and laid it over the back of Arte's neck. He noted the patch of matted hair on the back of the older man's head, and watched as Arte took the cloth from his neck and pressed his face into it, sighing.

"What happened, Arte?"

"Jim, I couldn't begin to tell you..." Arte said into the cloth. "At least not until I've had twenty-four hours of sleep...and I'm not even sure I can manage that."

"Will you at least let me look at that head, before you sleep?"

"It's fine, Jim, really..."

"Arte.."

Brown eyes rose to meet firm, unrelenting blue and Gordon sighed, accepted the inevitable and handed the cloth back to his partner. Jim's inspection took less than ten minutes, however, and he soon left the older man to sleep, promising that he would be in to wake him in four hours or less. "Just in case."

To his surprise Arte fell asleep soon after his head hit the pillow.


	5. Chapter 5

They traveled west without any further interruptions hitting the territories three days later, and Carson City late in the evening. Their witnesses were a curious sort. Three older women had been running and operating a boarding house located across the street from the Carson City mint, and had unknowingly boarded the thieves themselves while they planned their robbery.

The men had so thoroughly hidden their true intentions, that one of the women was convinced that the youngest robber would soon be her grandson-in-law, after she had introduced him to her granddaughter.

To a point the theft was a complete success but their get-away went awry and one of the thieves, wounded, dragged himself to the boarding house where he, in his delirium ratted out his partners and their hideout, before succumbing to his injuries. The other two bandits were captured three days later; the delay the result of deliberations of the kindly old ladies, and not necessarily difficulty in finding the criminals.

As the theft happened at night, and the only person in the mint was a night janitor who saw and heard nothing, (the night guard had been ill that evening and was napping during the robbery), the three old women became the only 'witnesses' and were essentially being called on to corroborate the time that the thieves left the boarding house before the crime was committed, and the time the injured thief returned. Most of the rest of their story was considered to be hearsay but the investigators had used the ladies' testimonies to bait the remaining thieves and at least one of the criminals had agreed to testify in exchange for a reduced sentence.

The concern was that if the women did not make it to court in one piece, the thief might recant. Thus Jim and Arte were called upon, as an extra precaution, to look after the women on their trip east. They were to be met by Federal Marshals in Pittsburgh who would ferry the ladies the rest of the way.

On the trip out to Nevada Jim spent most of his time sleeping off the rest of his cold, set more at ease when Arte's head injury proved to be healing with only headaches as a side effect. Still the man seemed unusually morose. By the time Jim was coherent enough to ask about it they were suddenly in the company of three talkative, excited and mildly exasperating older women who heard the remainder of the cold in Jim's voice and immediately set to nursing him.

The minute Arte started to enjoy the ladies' attention at Jim's expense, West let slip how concerned he was about his partner's head injury and the attention of the three grandmother's soon shifted. By the end of their first day of travel both West and Gordon were hiding out in the baggage car while the women over took the lounge with tittering, tatting and their plans for the dinner they insisted on making for the 'poor, sick boys'.

The baggage car, the horse's stalls and the animals themselves had never before been so well taken care of by the time night fell. Arte and Jim were searching for something else to occupy their time when Jim finally remembered to bring up the topic of how it was Arte went out on the town a whole man and returned missing some of his scalp. Gradually Arte explained the events of the very long evening.

By the time he finished Jim had run the gambit between surprise, disbelief, shock, hilarity and sympathy for his friend and partner. The following morning, while forced to make an unexpected stop in a town for what the ladies called 'supplies' without elaboration, Arte received an unexpected telegraph.

"YOUR PRESENCE NEEDED STOP RETURN TO CINCINNATI AT EARLIEST POSSIBLE CONVENIENCE STOP GIRLS IN TROUBLE STOP HH END"

"HH can only be Harold Hudson..."

"The security guard?"

"The same." Arte nodded, absently fingering the still healing cut at the back of his head as he stared at the telegraph. The letter he had written and left in the care of Sergeant Hudson had included information on how he could be reached, but Arte hadn't expected a reply so quickly. The ladies could hardly have had enough time to read what he had written, and he was certain they couldn't have liked any of it, let alone wanted to see his face again.

"What sort of trouble could they be in?" Arte wondered aloud, quelling the jolt of anxiety that had immediately followed his first glimpse of the telegraph.

"Maybe they have questions."

"Undoubtedly but I would just as happily return for that purpose, they needn't disguise it..."

"Maybe they want another crack at ya..." Jim said, craning his neck to see the cut that was still healing and knocking Arte's hand away from it.

"Ha ha..." Arte muttered, then both men jumped as the key began to rattle.

After listening for a moment Arte hastily grabbed for a pen and paper and started to copy the communique down. Jim leaned over his shoulder and read, "Change of plans. Code Blue Bird-"

Jim trailed off going for the code book that they kept hidden in an ornithology book in Arte's small library. As he flipped through the pages Arte called, "Chapter 17 Section I, Paragraph 9"

"Got it."

Arte translated the incessant tapping directly, "The cat's in the cradle..."

"New assignment, most urgent." Jim responded.

"Old mother Hubbard."

"Uh...fallen comrade."

"By the light of the silvery moon?"

"Rising again...or returning."

"Three little kittens..."

"That must be a reference to the old...the uh witnesses."

"Have found their mittens."

"Will be collected at..." Jim put a hand in the air as if to say that was all, and they waited a half second as the key fell silent.

When it rattled again Arte's pencil dropped to the desk and he stared at the machine as if it had suddenly sprouted arms and legs and danced a jig.

"Arte?"

"Cincinnati, Jim. Col. Richmond wants to meet us in Cincinnati to pick up the ladies and start a new assignment."

Blue eyes blinked for a moment before Jim nodded, "I guess your earliest convenience is going to be sooner than anticipated."

* * *

They arrived in the river town a few days later, and not hardly soon enough as far as either secret agent was concerned. Colonel Richmond had left word with the station master as to the hotel where he was staying, and Jim and Arte wasted no time in packing the ladies and their belongings into two separate hacks, taking alternate routes to the hotel before they happily delivered them into the capable hands of two Federal Marshals. Neither of their new keepers appeared to have any inkling of what awaited them in the next few days that they would spend in the presence of the three older women...worse still, neither Gordon or West took the time to warn them.

They joined Colonel Richmond for a late afternoon meal in the privacy of his hotel room.

"Artemus, Jim, good to see you both. I trust you're fully recovered from your illness?" The Colonel asked, smiling slyly as he waited for Jim's response. Clearly he was keenly aware of the attentions of the boarding house owners.

Jim smiled facetiously, and they were soon down to business.

"Did any of our witnesses add anything to their testimonies while you were en route?"

"Unless a recipe for chicken soup, or an old wives tale about cow liver and toadstools will help the case, no." Arte said, smirking at his partner.

"I imagine you gentlemen are relieved to be free of this particular duty a little sooner than planned?"

The question immediately had both men on the guard and Jim finally asked, "Why do I get the feeling we're about to be asked to do a favor, Colonel?"

Richmond sighed softly, then said, "Because you are." He paused long enough to pour himself a little more coffee then said, "We've all collected more than a few war stories over the years, but unlike the two of you gentlemen, my military record until I took over the Secret Service is relatively colorless. I served, but with little...flare, if you will. Only one incident stands out above the others and that was the day that my life was nearly lost in a place called Devil's Den, just outside of a small Pennsylvania farming community."

"Gettysburg." Jim said, and Richmond nodded.

"The most spectacular mistake of my military career was made that day, and nearly spelled the end of my life. Had it not been for Captain Unger..."

Arte choked on his coffee, going instantly red in the face, the coughing rapidly became so bad that he excused himself from the room.

For a moment Jim was lost, concerned for his partner, but clueless as to what had brought on the spell. Until he remembered their lengthy conversation in the baggage car, and the name that had been brought up more than once.

"Captain Joseph Unger, sir?" Jim clarified before Arte returned.

Distracted, Richmond nodded. "Yes...you know him?"

"I've...uh..."_know_"? Sir, I understand that he was killed while fighting at the battle of Gettysburg."

Richmond gave him a surprised look, but responded quickly. "So we thought. He was severely wounded and was removed from the field, but in the confusion of bodies at the hospital tents he was...greivously...lost in the shuffle. We...frankly we never found his body. It was assumed that he was buried in one of the mass graves. All that had seen him wounded, knew he couldn't have survived his injuries."

Arte's voice sounded from the door to the small water closet where the older man stood looking pale. "Are you trying to tell me that Captain Joseph Unger is still alive?"

"Yes! Washington received word a week ago that his identity had been verified by the Veterans Bureau and that he was returning to his family home in Cincinnati with his wife and children."

Arte's voice dropped in volume as he said, "His wife...his _second_ wife is dead, Col Richmond."

"He must have married again...I'm not entirely clear on what Washington was told but it seems that his injury caused severe brain damage that took some time to overcome. He's been living under an assumed name for seven years."

Arte grit his teeth behind his lips, fighting the urge to vomit, Harold Hudson's wire suddenly returning to him with a force that was almost physical.

Jim watched his partner for a second, before he hastily asked the question that he was certain Arte didn't want to know the answer to. "Colonel, why have you asked us here?"

Already picking up on the tension in the room, Richmond looked from one man to the next, not liking the reactions he was getting. "Gentlemen, Captain Joseph Unger saved my life and that of a thousand others, at the risk of his own. I thought him dead up until two days ago. I am indebted to the man and I asked to personally deliver to him the back pay that has been due him and his family since July 2, 1863. It is a great deal of money, as you can well imagine, and not something that I am willing to hand to just anyone. You gentlemen know more about cons and conning than I ever will and I wish for you to investigate the man, and verify that he is who he says he is."

"I thought you said that Washington-"

"Washington checked a serial number against a set of dog tags that some man handed them." The colonel said, tossing a crumpled napkin onto the table. "They made no further inquiries, other than asking for a forwarding address. Grant's sentimentality for veterans tends to outweigh caution in these matters. There has been a great deal of fraud as a result. As I have a...personal interest in this particular case, I have requested your help gentlemen. I repeat, this is a request."

"Forgive me, Colonel Richmond, but why do you need our help. Surely all you need do is meet the man face to face to know that its him." Arte said.

The Colonel sat, studying the older agent. Despite his eyes being focused on Arte clearly his mind was elsewhere and after a moment he said, "I would like to know that it is Joseph Unger before I see him..." The look that followed begged both men not to ask for more.

After a few minutes had passed with no further argument, Richmond stood. "I shall remain in town another three days before I have to return to Washington. If you can verify his identity in that time, I should like to meet the man again, myself. The completion of this assignment, Gentlemen, will mean a great deal to me."

Both men nodded, and Jim offered his hand to Richmond, who shook it gratefully. Arte quietly asked to be excused a second later and left the hotel room without further warning.

As Richmond handed Jim a folder containing the information Washington had gathered about Unger, he asked, "Do I need to know what's wrong with him?"

"You will...soon enough." Jim promised, then left.

* * *

"Arte, will you slow down!?"

"If he's here, Jim, the girls will be in trouble. If they've read what I wrote them...or talked at all with Sergeant Hudson they'll know enough to make him a danger to them."

"Sergeant Hudson?"

"Unger..." Arte said, in too much of a hurry to be perturbed. "He killed their mother, Jim. Hudson always suspected it, and I knew him to be capable of it. If he finds out what they know, he may try to kill them too..."

"Wait a minute...Arte!" Jim finally jogged forward a few steps and halted his partner, grabbing the man's elbow and pulling him out of the flow of pedestrian traffic.

Arte sighed heavily, rolling his eyes at his partner, before he finally jerked his arm free. "Jim, I don't have time to explain. I don't have time to make you understand something that I've suspected all of my life. I can't make this any plainer. Those girls are in trouble. If anything were to happen to them I would not be able to live with myself. If I have to do this alone, I will."

"Arte..." Jim said, shaking his partner by the shoulder, being more gentle than he wanted to be with the way Arte had suddenly become pig-headed. "I'm with you on this, one hundred percent, but you gotta stop and think for a minute about what you're doing."

Arte stared at him silently, his lips pressed stubbornly together.

"You don't even know where they live. The last time you saw them they made a semi-permanent dent in your skull, which so far hasn't helped your thinking ability."

"_Thank you_." Arte bit out and Jim beamed.

"You're welcome. We are, meanwhile, on assignment from Colonel Richmond, our _boss_, to deliver a large sum of money to this man, _not_...well...what _did _you have in mind?"

Arte started to open his mouth to respond, then realized what he had been thinking and snapped it shut again.

"That's what I thought you had in mind." Jim nodded, then glanced up the street at the sound of a trolley bell ringing. The horse-drawn carriage pulling up on the opposite side of the street.

"Alright, since premeditated murder is off the table, what do you suggest?" Arte asked, burying his irritation.

"That we return to The Wanderer so that you can work up a disguise, and I can change. Then we go visit Captain Unger at the address Colonel Richmond gave us."

"And then..?"

Jim pursed his lips and shrugged a little. "Maybe we'll visit the public library. I'm kinda curious to see it now."

* * *

A few hours later Jim and Arte sat quietly in the back of a hack waiting in a long line of other hacks for access to the steam operated lift car. Arte had dressed himself in a brown corduroy suit, and black trousers, donning a bushy mustache and mutton chops, a broad Germanic fake nose, and a black bowler hat that was just a little too big. This caused the hat to sit lower on his head and appear to dwarf him just a little. He'd stuffed the papers given to them by Washington into a light tan leather accordion folder and completed his ensemble with an official (looking) set of identification papers that verified that he was Argyle Lothario Klitenheimer, certified public accountant and official representative of the United States Treasury, working in conjunction with Captain James West for the purpose of returning to veterans their monies due...pending investigation.

Both Secret Service Agents had decided that Unger was more than likely completely aware that someone would be sent with his back pay, and wouldn't suspect an investigation into his identity. The closer they stuck to the truth the better, Arte determined. Jim had changed into the blue cavalry uniform that he kept with him at all times. Very little needed to be done to make the already soldierly man, look military. Arte had insisted that Jim practice saying his name over and over again on the hack ride through town, and that had led to a probing question on Jim's part.

"Would you tell me why it is that you choose the most bizarre, impossible to pronounce names known to man? Haven't you ever considered disguising your self as Joe Smith, or Bill Wilson?"

Arte pursed his lips, causing the mustache to crimp and bow. "Would Bill Wilson wear this get up? Would you look at a man with this mustache and think, 'That man's name MUST be Smith.'?"

Jim just shook his head in response, glancing out the window.

"A man cursed with a name like Klitenheimer would go out of his way to find other ways to distinguish himself."

"What about a man with a name like Gordon?"

"I'll have you know that Gordon is a well respected name in over a dozen countries?"

Jim blinked, then gave a surprised smile. "Alright, I'll bite. How is that possible, Arte?"

"The name Gordon is Scottish, English, French, Irish, Russian, Jewish, Spanish...depending on how you pronounce it."

"Alright, what does it mean?"

"For the Scots and the French its locational. The French derived the name from the region de la-"

"You know 'Gordon' sounds an awful lot like 'gordo'." Jim began, rolling the 'r' in the traditional Spanish way.

"That's not where it comes from..."

"Really?" Jim asked.

"Your name is nothing more than a cardinal direction, pal."

"Used the world over." Jim grinned.

* * *

The steam lift car had been placed on a track that headed up the hillside known as Knob Hill. A neighborhood of pricey mansions, shops, cafes and wilderness, Knob Hill had become something of a tourist attraction once the steam lift had been finished. Even with the line of traffic creating a long wait the trip directly up the hill was shorter than the ground level streets that zigzagged their way through the elevation change.

When they finally pulled up to the curb Arte stepped down from the hack and paid the driver, already in character. They walked together to a line waiting for the next car and soon found themselves wedged in along with three other men, a young blonde woman in her late-twenties, and two small children, neither older than the age of seven.

The youngest, a blue eyed, blonde haired little girl, stood holding her mother's hand and staring directly at Jim. When West finally noticed he smiled at her but ignored her, up until he felt a hand tugging on his coat.

"Mith-ter?" The girl asked, possessing a lisp that might have been the result of the two teeth missing from the front of her mouth.

"Miss..?" Jim responded, after given his partner a grin in passing.

"Are you a th-oldier?" The girl asked.

"I am. I'm a captain."

"My daddy wath a th-oldier too." She said before looking to her mother who chided her to leave the 'nice soldier' alone.

The girl seemed to have no more questions to ask and finished the ride by staring up at Arte instead. When Arte smiled at her she hid behind her mother's skirts, only peering out with a shy smile after they left the car.

"Cute kid." Jim commented.

"She seems not to like public accountants."

"Come on, Art-...gyle..., not even public accountants like public accountants."

Arte shrugged at the point, pleased that his partner had caught his slip up in time.

When the car crested the hill they allowed the lady and her children to exit first before following them onto the decorative platform that bore a crowd of its own.

"Alright, Klitenheimer, where is this residence we're supposed to be visiting?" Jim asked, searching the crowd with an official air just for kicks. More than a few of the men in the crowd were eyeing the uniform with curiosity, and at least one teenaged boy had already thrown a sarcastic salute his way. Jim ignored it, waiting as his partner consulted the map of the city they'd been given.

"Up two blocks that way, then down a street." Arte muttered, before he was bumped into from behind by someone in a hurry. Just as he was slipping into character, apologizing with a bow Arte, out of habit, brushed his breast pocket and found it empty. He hadn't felt the lift. Whoever had stolen the wallet had done well. None the less Arte was in character so he started caterwauling with a light German accent. "My wallet...that man there. Keptain West, that man there stole my wallet!"

"Really?" Jim asked sotto voce.

"Yes!" Arte answered, and watched as Jim took off at a run, pushing through the crowd and tracking down the sly character who took off at a dead run himself when he realized he was being pursued. Every eye was soon turned to the commotion and Arte slipped back away from the group to watch the young woman and her children continue down the street.

Headed up two blocks, he would bet, and then down a street, and as he watched he found he was right. They had, by chance or design, bumped into the new Mrs. Unger and her two children. The blue-eyed little girl had been the first to make him suspect it. He hurried after her, knowing his partner would catch the thief easily and anxious to get a glimpse of the man who Richmond so idolized.

Buried under his official concern was his fear for Louise and Hannah. Hudson had said they were in trouble, and wouldn't have done so if the trouble hadn't been serious. Striding with a self-important air down the street, Arte kept the lady and her brood in sight until they ducked down the appropriate street, both children chattering away to the woman who held their hands, oblivious to the man following them.

As the hubbub of the crowded lift car platform dwindled away Arte could hear the little girl's voice, pitched louder and higher than her older brother's. "Will we th-ee father today?" She wanted to know and when she got an answer she wasn't pleased with she asked, "Will we th-ee father tomorrow?" Again the woman shook her head, likely answering no, and the girl covered the rest of the week question by question, just to be on the safe side.

Their mother seemed neither perturbed by the questions nor surprised by them and Arte wondered if he had the right family after all.

When they turned toward the well manicured, fenced in lawn of a white washed small town mansion Arte had no doubt. This was the address given to the war department of Joseph Unger, his residence before the war began. His residence now that he had returned, so belatedly, from it. The children were greeted at the door by a negro maid who smiled warmly at them, then nodded a greeting to Mrs. Unger before looking out to the lone man standing on the street.

"Mrs. Unger, you expectin' visitors?" The maid called into the house and the young woman finally noticed that someone had trailed after her, someone vaguely familiar.

"Perhaps he's here to see Mr. Unger." The woman said, then moved to follow her children up the grand main staircase to their rooms.

As the mustachioed gentleman finally made the decision to enter the gate and stroll down the walk, the maid stood at the door, watching cautiously as she always did until she had judged the man to be relatively harmless, even businesslike.

"We don't take nothin' from no peddlers, mister." She warned before Arte even stepped up to the porch.

"Oh...peddlers...I am not a peddlers, Frauline. I am...ach...here." Arte reached for his identification papers only to remember that they had been in his wallet, and his wallet had just been stolen. He searched the other pockets of his coat until he found the single card that he had grabbed belatedly from the train. He handed this to the maid, who looked it over for a second, clearly foreign to the idea of government identification, but able to read. Accountant meant business, and the stamp of the Federal Government, could only mean that the caller was indeed there to see the master of the house.

"Captain Unger, ain't here just now, Mr. Kitten-hemmer-"

"Klight-en-high-mer...please. Do you know when the master might be home next?" Arte asked, peering around the woman's shoulder at the grandeur of the front hall.

The maid slowly shook her head no. Arte stood, waiting for an invitation, or a dismissal or something. But none came.

Finally he said, "This is most urgent business, Frauline." Stressing 'urgent' poignantly.

"The Missus will be down in a minute..."

"Ah." Arte said, then took another step towards the door. The maid straightened effectively blocking the door. "I'll just...wait here then."

The maid nodded, then closed the door and Arte was left standing on the porch, with nothing to look at but an urn of Morning Glories.

* * *

The thief was an annoyance that Jim had every intention of putting down quickly and quietly, but the man, possessing long legs and even longer strides, didn't have to run terribly fast to gain a lot of distance. Jim chased him a mile and a half at top speed dodging people, carriages, trash in alleys, small cats and large rodents and at least one small child before the thief ducked into a tenement house.

Without breaking stride Jim barreled right into the door, managing to hit before the thief had it locked or barred. The door burst open, then flew off its hinges and West rode it into the narrow hall and to the floor. He expected the thief to be nowhere in sight, and was surprised to see that he had knocked the man cold with the door, and now lay on top of him.

Arte's wallet had been tossed down the hall when the thief fell.

After divesting the man of a small knife, Jim pushed himself to his feet on spongy legs, breathing steadily with the rush of adrenaline still pumping through him. He lifted the door off the thief, propping it against its frame, then stood over the sprawled man considering what he was going to do with him. He was young, relatively agile, and obviously not making much of a living off his chosen profession if his living space and clothing were any indication.

Given that he had another job to do Jim was considering letting the thief off with a warning, when he heard a female voice speaking down the hall.

"Hannah? What happened, did you drop something?" The voice asked, peering out of a door before the woman spotted the man lying in the hall and shrieked, throwing flour coated hands to her open mouth. "Peter! Oh! You've killed him!" She declared, rushing from behind the door to the fallen form of 'Peter'.

Jim backed away a step or two, starting to explain, "He's not dead, Ma'am. I knocked him out with the door. He's a thief, I wouldn't get too close-"

He was cut off by a blow to the head that came from behind. Fireworks exploded in front of his eyes and he put out his hands, catching himself on the rail of the stair case before he could go face first into the steps. He turned in time to ward off a second blow by throwing his forearm into the air. His attacker was a woman. Brown hair, blue eyes, blazing hotly as she wielded a man's walking cane preparing to strike again.

Jim hastily backed up the stairs, crab walking with his hands, his head still swimming dangerously.

"Oh poor, Peter. You've been so kind to us." The woman kneeling on the floor moaned piteously.

"What happened, Louise?" The blue-eyed woman demanded, keeping a wary eye on the man woozily nursing his head on the stair.

"I don't know, I was making the pies and heard such a crash coming from the hallway, then I saw that brute standing over Peter and...good heavens, the door is broken!"

"You beast!" Hannah huffed, stomping up the stairs with the cane high over her head, a heavy canvas sack in the other hand.

Jim still hadn't managed to get the world to stop spinning but he put up a hand to defend himself none-the-less.

"He's a thief!" He tried to protest, and Louise reacted with an outraged, "What!?" as if she'd only heard this proclamation for the first time.

"A pick-pocket!" Jim repeated then pointed through the slats on the stair rail. "That wallet down there, it was stolen from a government accountant that I was dispatched to escort. It doesn't belong to this...Peter whoever he is...ah!"

The lump on the back of his head was egg sized and growing, and the woman hovering over him on the stair menacingly, looked like she was more than ready to give him another one.

"Government...ha! Is that everyone's excuse these days?! You chase a man down and attack him and think that proclaiming that you're some sort of...secret...agent...oh Hannah..." Louise had finally collected the wallet and opened it to find that it wasn't Peter's after all. The identification inside belonged to a Klitenheimer and there were official looking orders folded and stuffed into a pocket. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that this was the second or third wallet she had seen in Peter's possession in the last few days.

"Oh no, don't tell me..." Hannah sighed, feeling a familiar sickness grip her stomach.

"This isn't Peter's wallet." Louise said softly, then looked with sudden disgust at the unconscious man on the floor. "I knew this place was too good to be true."

Hannah's face, awash with guilt, finally swam into focus and Jim gave a wary glance to the cane she still held.

"I'm...so entirely sorry, sir. I'm just not...we just are not accustomed to this part of town and...I saw you standing over that man, and I thought he was our friend and..."

"Did you not notice the uniform?" Jim asked incredulously, before he latched a hand onto the stair rail and pulled himself dizzily to his feet. Hannah looked at the front of his uniform coat as if seeing it for the first time, and groaned miserably before she backed down the steps.

Jim had intended to follow her but the minute he was upright his knees started to buckle. He clung to the railing and brought in hasty, heaving breaths, fighting a little nausea now along with the dizziness. After a few moments of struggling to remain upright, Jim finally gave in and sat back down on the stair.

"Oh, your poor head. Louise, run and fetch a cold cloth will you?"

"Wait a minute...her name is Louise?" Jim asked, jumbled memories clashing like waves against one another in his brain.

"My sister, Louise Johnson, and my name is Hannah McGuff...would you hold still so that I can look at-" Hannah gasped as the uniformed man grasped her wrist, pulling her fingers away from the back of his head, light bluish-green eyes suddenly boring into hers.

"Your Hannah McGuff, Hannah Unger McGuff?"

"Yes..but how did you-?"

"Five days ago you used a cane just like that one to knock out a man named Artemus Gordon?"

Hannah's eyes widened at the accusation, her irises expanding at the sound of the name and she opened her mouth to respond, then seemed to err on the side of caution. "I would ne-, I never-, I..."

Jim let her hand go a moment later and sighed softly. "I'm here...we are here to help you. Both of you." He said through gritted teeth.

"But how...I.."

"It's a long story..listen, are you living here?"

Hannah's lips came together firmly and she said, "Not that it's any of your business, but yes. We've...been forced to take up new residence."

"How do you feel about staying temporarily in a private train car instead?" Jim offered, gallantly.

* * *

By the time Mrs. Unger joined him on the porch it was in the company of her maid, who brought with her a silver tray and tea service. Mrs. Unger led the way down the long porch to a small shaded corner that bore a rot iron table and chairs. The service was set on the table and the maid proceeded to serve the tea, quietly and expertly before departing.

Arte thought he had caught a warning glance from the maid before her back turned but couldn't be certain.

"Forgive my inhospitality, Mr. Klinden-"

"Klitenheimer." Arte provided, smiling graciously.

"Klitenhem- em, Kligh...sir, but you see my husband is very strict about there not being any male visitors inside the home while he is away."

"A wise precaution to take, in any case, Frau Unger. Your husband is a cautious man."

The young woman's eyes wandered a little as she nodded, clearly thinking of another word to describe her husband's behavior, but having the grace not to say it. She sipped quietly at her tea, and waited through a long awkward moment before she cleared her throat and said, "You were hoping to meet with my husband...I apologize that he isn't here just now."

"Your hausmädchen was unable to tell me, when will he-"

The young lady smiled apologetically, shaking her head. "Our family has only recently returned here, and my husband spent the first day of our arrival casting out some squatters that had taken over the family home. He was a war hero you know, and presumed dead. A dreadful tale, truly, but now he is returned to his rightful place and is seeking employment. I don't know when you can next call on him."

The man Mrs. Unger spoke of didn't sound like Joseph Unger. He sounded like a man Arte would want to know, and would consider a good and loyal friend. He sounded like someone that a family should be rejoicing was found. Mrs. Unger was painting a rosy picture of her husband that Arte was certain was an act.

He observed her for a moment. She was very pretty, delicate and feminine. Not the type to fight against her husband's will, but she wasn't stupid. There was some intelligence hidden behind the beauty. Hidden, he thought, intentionally.

She was very much like Analise had been, and yet clearly not Analise...because she hadn't yet been beaten. She hadn't yet refused her bed to her husband only to have him force his rights as her mate upon her. He could see it in her eyes. She suspected or had been told about her husband's previous wives, but she hadn't seen it first hand.

Arte wanted to tell her to get out while she still had the chance. To warn her that it would get worse, all it took was the right young man falling for her, or appearing to fall for her, and her life, and her children's lives would be hell.

But he had learned over the years about assumptions, impulsive actions, and about following the heart into destruction, where the mind would have warned otherwise.

Finally Arte smiled. "Perhaps I should call tomorrow?" He asked.

"That would be lovely." Mrs. Unger said, and before she could say more Arte bowed and left, his tea un-touched.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Hey ladies! I have my life back! Hopefully I can start churning out chapters a little faster. On with the show!**

* * *

Arte was surprised when Jim didn't join him at the Unger residence. When he managed to get all the way back to the steam car platform with no sign of the younger man he started to get concerned. Surely it wouldn't have taken James West _that_ long to chase down one thief.

None the less, under the guise of the German accountant, Arte asked after the "Keptain" who had chased down his stolen wallet and was pointed in a general north eastern direction. A hundred questions later and he had tracked Jim a mile and a half to a tenement house with a door hanging off its hinges.

The man attempting to fix the door spotted Arte quickly, gave a shout of surprise, then ducked into the building and refused to answer any of Gordon's shouted questions.

This man had to have been the thief, Arte surmised, and clearly judging by the condition of the door, Jim had been there and gone.

Gordon's next thought was to find the library and, hopefully, the Unger sisters, and he set out on foot, regretting the loss of his wallet. The day, however was bright, clear and pleasant. He did his best to enjoy it as he walked, but a nagging doubt kept pecking away at the back of his mind until, when he finally addressed it, he noticed that he was being followed. The first man he spotted was behind him and across the street, hanging back about twenty feet, but always stopping or slowing when Arte did.

To test his theory Arte ducked into a haberdashery with windows facing away from the sun, then peered casually out at the street. The man on the opposite side had stopped, leaned against a wall and was quietly watching the store front. Gray suit, gray bowler, mid-thirties. He looked nondescript. The perfect man to blend into a crowd.

As he watched Arte realized that the man was silently communicating with someone else. Someone on Gordon's side of the street. He couldn't see the man from there, but it wouldn't matter. He had no intention of setting himself up for an ambush. Arte tipped his hat gallantly at the clerk then walked straight through the long narrow store to the rear entrance. He opened the door, leaned out into the empty alley, then stepped down to the cobblestone and back tracked, planning to go back the way he had come until he had surpassed the men following him, then enter another store from the alley and continue on his way.

His plan however hinged on the assumption that there were only two men following him. As it turned out, there were at least three.

* * *

"We had only just moved in to that awful tenement house yesterday." Hannah explained, seeming worn. From the time they left the tenement to their arrival at the Pearl Street station she had been vehemently apologizing for the unintended blow to Jim's head. Any time he so much as cringed she heaped yet more heartfelt sorry's on him.

"That's why it only took us a few minutes to pack, we had hardly un-packed." Louise added from where she sat on the settee in the lounge of the varnish car. "Oh...that rotten Peter. And we fell for his act whole heartedly."

"We should have stayed in that boarding house with Mrs. Lovell, but she smelled so awful."

"Like garlic and Limburger cheese." Louise agreed.

Jim had managed to open his mouth for a question but hadn't been given enough time to ask it before Hannah was answering it.

"Really none of this makes sense, even to us, Captain West. I can understand why you're confused. You see it would seem that our fa-...that he..."

"We thought he was dead, Captain West." Louise broke in. "We knew that he had been killed in the War, just as our husbands had been. All that we had left was the family home, so we lived there. We found ways to earn our keep as best we could. When we had to we sold off the silver and the gold. It was a fine house, but an old one...we did what we could..."

"He tossed us out! Like we were beggars, like we were squatters. Strangers! We recognized him of course."

"You know as well as I do, Hannah, that he recognized us. He knew who we were but he still treated us like criminals...and in front of that woman!"

"It was as if he hadn't changed at all...except grown even more distant, cold, cruel." Hannah's voice began to crack with her saddened resolve, her eyes welling with tears that she refused to let fall.

Her sister's face was similarly red. "There was no time to explain. He and his...goons-"

"Goons?"

"Oh yes," Louise nodded. "Four brutish and violent men that he called his 'employees'. He had them do his dirty work."

"Dirty work?" As Jim asked the question he heard the tea kettle begin to whine in the kitchen and left to retrieve it quickly bringing it to the table where he had done his best to set tea.

"They man-handled us. Harangued us while we packed. Made sure we weren't 'stealing' anything of value from 'his' house." Hannah said, she and Louise rising from their seats on the settee and joining West at the table.

As Jim poured the hot water into the pre-warmed tea-pot, mixing the leaves before he let it all steep, he asked, "What did these men look like?"

Louise and Hannah looked at one another for a long time, a silent communication passing between the sisters before Louise said, "Two of them were very tall. One with fiery reddish hair and the other brown hair. The brown-haired one always carried a gun with him, and would flip it about like he was a hired killer, showing off what he could do with it when he wasn't pulling the trigger."

Hannah nodded and continued as she poured the tea. "The other two were closer to your height, one of them wore all gray, a gray bowler and suit. The fourth one...Captain West he was the most frightening of them all."

"Irish, fresh off the boat, and mean. Everything he said was spoken at a mere whisper but that was more frightening than if he had been shouting. When he looked at us..." Louise shuddered.

"I hope never to see, or be seen, by that man again."

"As soon as Arte gets back-"

"Arte?"

"Artemus Gordon, my partner, the man who-"

Already Hannah was blushing furiously, angry shame on her face. Jim cleared his throat, regretting his words but continued.

"As soon as Arte gets back we'll-"

"Back? Where has he gone?" Louise interrupted earning a chastising look from her sister.

"To the Unger residence. As soon as he gets back we'll-"

"Oh no!" Both girls said at once, Louise visibly paling.

"Oh he's in great trouble, Captain." Hannah breathed.

"We heard Fa- we heard Mr. Unger give the order himself. Anyone else to visit the Unger residence was to be followed and...dissuaded-"

"Permanently." Hannah emphasized, before Louise finished.

"From visiting again."

* * *

At first Arte tried to talk his way out of it. He was just an accountant, sent on government business. He had no money, if they were planning to rob him; and had no real worth if they were planning to kidnap him.

The men searched him (thankfully after Arte had managed to palm the one smoke bomb he had thought to grab from his laboratory), then commenced to menace him while asking questions. When his answers did not meet with their approval the red-head drew back a fist. Arte made his move, jumping up, leaning back against the man holding his arms, and kicking out at the chest of the red-head before he took a deep breath, tossed the bomb and ran.

He'd almost made it to the end of the alley when the fourth man appeared, armed, and in his path.

"I don' believe the fellas were done with ye yet." The Mick said, his brogue tumbling out of his mouth like toy blocks. His words were calm, cold, and indicated immediately that he would greatly enjoy whatever was about to happen next.

His hands in the air, Arte was forced to return to the mass of weeping, coughing, gagging humanity clustered behind the haberdashery. His smoke bomb had visited a special brand of misery on each of the three men and they were not happy about it.

They spent the next twenty minutes proving it.

Arte did what he could to fight back. If his name had been West instead of Klitenheimer he might have stood a chance against the four men.

By the time they grew tired of the 'game' Arte had learned two things. First that Unger didn't want visitors of any kind coming near his home, especially not male visitors. That message had been very clear and Arte found himself grateful that Colonel Richmond hadn't made the trip himself.

Second he learned that Unger hired only the best when it came to goons and henchmen. The three men knew what they were doing and never wasted a punch or a kick, the fourth man seemed to have the power to speak the world into motion.

They left the secret serviceman crammed into a corner of the alley, bleeding and bruised, convinced that they had sufficiently scared him away from the Unger household for the rest of his natural life.

Arte had done his best to hide his anger. Better to appear thoroughly cowed, he thought.

As his busted lip continued to swell, Arte carefully peeled what remained of his mustache away. He pressed stiff fingers against the puffiness at his eye, then peered at his hand to make sure he wasn't bleeding.

No, the wetness was only the grimy, stagnate water of the alley that he had been pressed face first into more than once.

One of his ears had been split open at the top, and that was bleeding, matting the hair on that side. His jaw was stiff but he still had all his teeth, and despite their best efforts they hadn't managed to break his nose. His real one or the fake one.

He pulled the fake nose off carefully and pocketed it before he used the debris around him to carefully stand.

His ribs were sore, bruised, but not broken. One arm was throbbing, shoulder to wrist. It had been held under the boot of the gun hand during the latter half of the beating. His knees were scraped raw, his pants soaked and ruined thanks to the puddles he was dragged through. But he could stand, and walk, and started to cautiously make his way out of the alley.

He ached and throbbed but he was alive, and he hadn't cracked. Klitenheimer was still a living entity and if the men reported back to Unger about their day's activities they would likely tell the man about the Germanic government accountant they had beaten, instead of giving Unger a description of the grown-up whelp he had shot, and left for dead, thirty years ago.

Arte checked his breast pocket last, patting the bulge there with the start of a small grin on his face. Pretending to be cowed had served a second purpose, bringing him multiple times into close contact with the wallets of each of the four men. He had thus managed to abscond with all four of their purses. It was best to vacate the alley before they discovered the items missing.

Nearing the street Arte swayed, caught himself against the wall, and rested, breathing through the pain. What had the Mick said? Something about Unger becoming a big man, a man who didn't need a pittance from the government to get where he was going.

And Mrs. Unger had indicated that the reason Mr. Unger had been absent was his search for a job. More like a search for a small country to conquer, Arte thought. If there was to be a next step, beyond sleeping for a week, it would be to find out precisely what Unger had been doing before he moved back to Ohio.

Gritting his teeth Gordon pushed away from the wall and stepped out of the dark alley into the sunlight. It stabbed at the pain in his head viciously and Arte turned away from it, pulling back into the dark recesses between the buildings.

He felt drunk, and dizzy, and moments later he was being handled again. He started to fight until he recognized the uniform of a police constable.

"This man's been badly beaten, call for a doctor." He heard the constable say, then he was being guided to sit on the curb. The constable asked, "Who did this to you, sir?"

Arte was about to respond, still in the character of Klitenheimer, ready to accuse the four men of stealing his wallet when he remembered the four wallets stuffed into his coat and thought better of it. Feigning exhaustion, which in the end wasn't much of a stretch, Arte could only shake his head, then let it hang until the clatter of a carriage marked the arrival of the physician.

* * *

West would have been days searching the city if it hadn't been for the crowd at the mouth of the alley. He'd gone to the Unger place, but was told that the 'gov'ment man' had left an hour ago. He'd asked at the steam car platform only to be told that his partner had done precisely the same thing in efforts to find West thirty minutes ago. He'd been backtracking his original route through the city when the crowd of on-lookers sent a chill down his spine.

A carriage was pulling up to the crowd, and he could see the distinguished figure of a doctor stepping out with a bag in his hand. On the other side of the street he caught a glimpse of a second carriage, and watched briefly, hoping against hope that somehow his partner would step uninjured from the carriage. Instead it was an older man, thin, and fierce-looking with a military haircut and a cold blue gaze.

Frustrated Jim worked his way through the lookie-loos, taking on an official air and instructing the crowd to disperse. Artemus Gordon was at the center of the bodies and he looked like he'd been through hell, his face bloodied and swelling. There was also a peculiar bulge high on his right side that Jim didn't want to know about.

As he drew closer Arte met his eyes and Argyle Klitenheimer's frantic German accent started to tumble from his mouth, the consonants marred by the swelling in his lip and jaw. "Keptain West! Those terrible men attacked me. The ones that you chased after to fin' my wallet...they followed me and...and...never have I thought that America would be so _heftig_!"

For a few confused moments Jim wondered if Arte hadn't lost his mind. If he wasn't suffering from some strange version of amnesia that allowed him to forget his real identity but fully inhabit that of one of his characters. Then he noticed Arte was rhythmically patting the bulge in his jacket, and Jim knelt, patting Arte's shoulder and the lump as though he were calming the man down.

He had expected to feel the outline of a gun, but as he drew closer Arte whispered "wallets" and a little bit of sleight of hand had the otherwise damning evidence transferred from Arte's pocket to Jim's.

The doctor was tsking about Arte's condition, and the poor light on the street, and even though he was maintaining his character well enough Jim could see that Arte was bad off. When the doctor decided that he needed to be moved to be treated Jim helped his partner up and toward the carriage, explaining as briefly as possible who he was, and why he was there, when the doctor and constable gave West a questioning glance.

He was settling Arte in the carriage when his partner grabbed his arm and wouldn't let go.

"That's him..."

"That's who?"

"Unger...there, the man coming out of that tobacconist. That's Unger, Jim."

The word 'tobacconist' had gotten lost somewhere in the swelling but Jim managed to translate and asked. "You're sure?"

Arte merely gave him a look.

"Will you be alright?" Jim asked, thinking that the last time he had left his partner on his own...

"Follow him, Jim, but be careful. He's built a lot of power around him, and he's looking to gain more."

Jim nodded, gave Arte's shoulder a squeeze and stepped back out of the carriage before it rolled away with the doctor on board.

He resisted the urge to turn and watch the cold-eyed man, who surveyed the street for a moment before starting up the walk at a military pace.

Jim instead went down the boards in the other direction and walked half a block before crossing the cobblestones and ducking into another alley. He ran down the length of it until he found what he was looking for. An iron ladder descending the height of the building from the rooftop. Jim ascended quickly then ran across the slight peak of the roof until he could once more observe the street below. He scanned several blocks, wishing he had a telescoping eye-glass with him, until he spotted the ramrod straight figure continuing up the street.

Unger seemed to have a purpose, yet did not turn off the walk, or hail a cab. Instead he walked, giving every store front a calculating glance before continuing on.

When he did finally duck into a building Jim noted the name of it, The Southern Bank of Ohio. Climbing down from the roof he maintained an awareness of his surroundings as he ran toward the street. He could feel the weight of the four wallets in his pocket and wanted to dig through them, but couldn't very well do that in the open. The last thing he wanted was to meet the owners of the wallets with the articles still on him.

Walking as fast as he could without rousing suspicion, West covered the distance to the bank and walked past it, up to the next alley where he once more found a way onto the roof. From there he scanned the streets making sure that Unger was in fact still in the bank, before he tugged the wallets out.

The first had very little money in it, a few tokens for a brothel and three ace cards, each from a different deck. The initials R. W. were carved in the leather. The owner was a poor card player, and a sore loser.

The other three wallets were bursting with cash.

One, with the initials G. G., carried an identification disk like what had been worn by many soldiers during the War. It carried his name, unit and regiment, and the letters C.S.A. G. G. was George Getzman, of the 5th Kentucky, Company B. At the time that the disc had been made Getzman had been a corporal.

Before he could get to the other two wallets, Unger stepped out of the bank and hailed a cab, and West was forced to scramble down to street level as quickly as possible. He watched the hack as it pulled away, then followed it on foot, through the heavy traffic of the afternoon.

* * *

The doctor took Artemus Gordon to his office and after guiding the injured man into a room with a bed and a wash basin, Arte was left to his own devices. The doctor promised to return shortly and in the hallway had a brief conversation with a female voice before the hall was silent too.

The long ride seemed to have made everything hurt worse, and getting out of the hack had been more painful than the original beating. Arte felt stiff and tender, and it didn't matter how he sat or lay, he was constantly upsetting some contusion or cut.

Never mind being paid by the mile, he thought, we should be paid by the bruise.

He carefully pulled off his jacket, wincing at the rips and tears in the material. The jacket was something of a lost cause, having died a heroic death.

A war hero...Mrs. Unger had described her husband as a war hero. But she'd said it in an odd way. On the surface she was wholly devoted to her husband, but Arte got the idea that that was a survival mechanism.

He thought about Hannah and Louise. He still didn't know what had come of them, or why Hudson had sent him the frantic message. He realized a moment later that they may well have been the 'squatters' that Unger had supposedly cast from his home.

If that were the case, both women would have been no better than homeless for most of a week.

The anger and fear that suddenly fueled him had Arte standing and jerking the jacket back on. He went to the basin and splashed water over his face, cringing at the blood that came away, but he didn't have time.

Holding his bruised and stiff arm against his black and blue rib cage, Arte poked his head into the hallway of the doctor's office, checked that it was clear, then limped his way to what he hoped was a rear entrance.

He would get to The Wanderer, slowly but surely, clean himself up, change, then go out to find the girls. With West trailing Unger, Arte had no doubt the girls would be safe, at least, from his wrath. It was only the rest of Cincinnati that he had left to worry about.

* * *

Louise and Hannah had brought from the tenement house the few groceries they had bought for that week, and found more than enough to work with in the kitchen of the strange but opulent rail car. They were well on their way to producing a fine meal for themselves and their host when they heard the door of the lounge slam shut.

Both women stopped in their work to make eye contact before Hannah called, "Captain West?"

There was no response and a second later instead of a voice they heard a loud grunt, and the sound of something heavy crashing into the furniture.

Startled Hannah armed herself with the closest weapon she could find, a small cast iron pan, and rushed out into the lounge, not sure what she was expecting to find. It certainly wasn't a bloodied man in a torn suit lying on the floor.

"Mr. Gordon!" Hannah cried, the words drawing her sister from the kitchen. Together they helped the barely conscious secret serviceman to his feet, guiding him to one of the chairs near the pot belly stove. While the early evening had not yet frosted, Artemus felt chilled and clammy to the touch, and had a look of shocked bewilderment on his face.

"Hannah? Louise? But how did...? Where...?"

"Please Mr. Gordon, we'll explain it later...oh your poor face." Hannah moaned softly before she went to the kitchen to gather what she would need. Louise remained, stoking the fire in the stove, before she helped Arte out of his jacket. She thought she might have heard him mumble something that ended with "...this again.." Once he was free of the torn and soaked article Arte leaned back into the chair holding his left arm with his right.

He hadn't seen either woman in a week's time, but they had never been far from his mind. Now he was once more struck by the similarities between the two, and their shocking resemblance to their mother. However, he realized with a start, neither of the girls in any way resembled their father.

Heredity could be fickle, he knew, and the discovery of finger prints and their uniqueness to all human beings was only a fledgling science that he hoped would lead to others, but still he expected to see some part of Joseph Unger in the girls.

A moment later he realized that Louise had been calling his name. "I can't get this shirt off, and he seemed to lose consciousness..." Louise was explaining.

Hannah sighed and nodded, putting the basin and cloths that she had collected on the table, before both girls pulled Gordon upright. The movement brought life back into him and he gently guided their hands away, accepting the soaked cloth that Hannah held out and placing it over his swollen face, sighing at the unexpected relief.

"It was _his _men that did this..." Louise pointed out to her sister, sounding heartbroken. Her next words were obscured by a sob and the younger woman quickly rushed from the room.

Reluctantly Arte pulled the cloth from over his eyes and craned his neck painfully in the direction that Louise had gone before he looked at Hannah, who was fighting her own battle with powerful emotions.

With the efficiency of a field nurse, however, Hannah began ministering to the wounded man. She helped him out of the torn shirt, frowning at the bruises on his chest, back, and arms. She cleaned the cuts with hot water and soap, and treated the bruises with witch hazel, determining for herself whether any bones were broken.

She brought Gordon a blanket before she allowed him to remove his pants in privacy, then returned to treat the wounds on his knees.

By the time she finally returned to his face, and removed the cloths she had been refreshing throughout in hopes of reducing the swelling, Louise had returned to the room, and quietly went about cleaning up the bloodied cloths. She fed the fire then disappeared into the kitchen.

The treatment had done little for the pain, but wonders for the soul, and Arte found himself drifting as the fire warmed the car.

Louise had apparently found his berth and had brought a change of clothes for him and Hannah, after once more giving him privacy in which to change his trousers, helped him button the shirt and smoking jacket.

As she had nursed him Arte had begun to develop a list of questions in his mind, none of which seemed appropriate to ask. Hannah's every move had been expert, but a glance to her face told Arte that she was vulnerable, that she was in fact making herself vulnerable in those moments. He could have asked, and she would have answered, but it would have been a gross breach of...of something. Perhaps of the infant trust that they had developed.

Arte remembered closing his eyes, but he didn't remember falling asleep until he opened his eyes and realized that he was awake. The car was darker than before but the sun was still up and Hannah sat near him, her hand holding his. The way a child would hold the hand of an ill parent.

When Hannah looked up, Arte could see that she had been crying.

"Mr. Gordon?"

Arte swallowed, found his throat too dry to respond, and merely nodded.

"He...Joseph Unger...can he really be our father?" Hannah asked.

Arte closed his hand tightly around her fingers, and stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, unable to respond. Frightened of what the answer would be, and wondering the same thing himself.

Long ago Anna Unger had told him that there were things about her, and about Joseph, that he didn't know. He had thought that he had found the answers the night the Monica II burned and his world changed...but now...now a distant part of him asked a young Anna, just how many secrets she had been hiding after all.

* * *

Jim followed Unger through the streets of the city until it grew late and Unger finally returned to his home on the hill. It had been a day of exploration. None of the stops necessarily made sense. Joseph had stopped equally as long in banks as he did in taverns. He spent as much time with haberdashers as he did lawyers. He even visited a physician who worked in what might have been called the red lantern district of the city. Jim remembered passing a dozen other offices of physicians on the way there, why this doctor?

West made note of each name and place, thinking that he would retrace Unger's path the next morning. For now he had left the girls alone in the varnish car for far too many hours, and he still had to check on his partner's condition at the office of the physician that had seen to him.

He arrived at the medico only to find it locked for the night, with no one inside.

Jim took a hack to the Pearl Street station. He hadn't seen any of the four goons the girls had described, or noticed anyone paying him any special interest. He'd done his best to be invisible while tracking Unger. Just the same he checked all around The Wanderer before he went inside.

As he entered he was hit by a wall of warmth, and the smell of stew and fresh bread. On the table were a handful of covered dishes and as soon as the lounge car door shut, Hannah poked her head out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel.

"Captain West! Thank heavens!"

"I am truly sorry that I left you and your sister here alone for so long, but if you'll forgive me for being abrupt...is some of that for me?"

Hannah smiled slightly and nodded, "All that you want of it. Mr. Gordon, Louise and I have already eaten."

"Arte's here?"

"Sleeping." Hannah said, nodding again, but the smile she tried fell flat. "He was very badly beaten."

"I know...thank you."

The words were awkward and not satisfactory but Jim was starving and the food smelled like heaven. He sat down and was served stew and fresh bread, coffee and just baked apple pie. After they finished in the kitchen Hannah and Louise joined him for dessert and they sat letting the cutlery talk.

With his belly full, and the still sweet taste of cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar fighting against the earthy bitterness of the coffee; the lounge car bright and warm and the company of two beautiful women across the table. James West would have been content if he hadn't also been in the middle of a case he barely understood, with his partner sleeping off a beating in the next room.

"Mr. Gordon invited us to stay..." Louise said cautiously after she had poured the last of the coffee into each cup. "I hope that's alright.."

"It isn't alright." Jim said after he considered the young woman's hesitation. "It's necessary, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

"What..." Hannah began then looked to her sister. The two always seemed to draw strength and courage from one another with simple glances or words. "What interest do you have in Joseph Unger? Is...is this about a murder?"

Jim pursed his lips then stood and gathered the envelope that Colonel Richmond had given he and Artemus. He spread the sheets of information and the small packet containing Unger's back pay on the table and let the girls leaf through it while he cleared the dishes.

"This is so..." Hannah began.

"So simple!" Louise finished.

"Why wouldn't fath- why wouldn't Joseph Unger simply accept this money and move on?" Hannah asked.

Jim got the feeling that they had gotten more out of Gordon than he had, but he could easily imagine the conversation that took place.

"This isn't the first thing that brought us back..." Jim mentioned, then showed them the telegram that Hudson had sent.

"Hudson!" Louise sparked, surprised. "But we haven't been near the library since...well..."

Again Hannah blushed, but not as deeply. "We haven't seen Hudson in a week's time, how could he possibly know that we were in trouble."

"Artemus gave me the impression that Hudson had been concerned for you and your sister long before you began going to the library."

Both girls looked at one another, then back to Jim. When he was able to meet their eyes again they were haunted, and they had paled visibly.

Carefully Jim told them the story that Hudson had told Arte, and that Arte had in turn told him. That Hudson claimed to have been an officer of the law when their mother was killed. That he claimed to have tried to pin the murder on Joseph Unger, and that his failure to do so had begun a life long obsession that had resulted in his following the family faithfully since then.

Realization dawned quietly in the reserved gazes of both women, and Jim could see that his explanation had given neither of them comfort.

"I don't remember him. Of course I remember so little about those days but..." Hannah sighed and stood, smoothing her hands over the front of her skirt as she paced quietly. "Forgive me, Captain West, but you have to understand. Nothing that we were told, nothing that we remember of our childhood, would appear to be true anymore."

"Also we've lost our home...it's been torn away from us by the man who...by our father!" Louise said, finally spitting out the word that both women had been avoiding all night long. "The only home either of us has really known."

"We have no husbands or children. All we have...all we had, is now gone, and we are left with nothing...not even the sanctity of our memories."

"Do you want them back?"

Both girls turned with surprise at the sound of the voice, taking in the pale, but much less swollen face of the man who had been startling them regularly for a week.

"Do I want-"

"Do you want it back? Your memories, the house, your lives the way they were?"

Louise took in a breath to immediately respond, then hesitated, and truly thought about the question. When she came up with an answer she looked up to her sister to find that she felt the same way. Both women finally turned to Gordon and shook their heads no.

"How about the truth? Do you want that?" Arte asked, softer.

Neither woman had to respond.

"It's going to hurt." He warned, and the sister's once again looked to each other before they nodded.

"It's going to take time, and it will be dangerous." Jim added, already getting something of an idea of where Arte was headed. "Nothing will be the same when we're done."

"All we _have _is nothing, Captain West." Louise said.

"If all we can gain is the truth, I'd rather that." Hannah added.

Later that evening, after Jim had made up their berths for the ladies to sleep in and helped his partner make a chair by the fire a little more comfortable, both men sat discussing what the next day would bring.

"What did you find in the wallets?" Arte asked, still speaking around some swelling, but nothing as bad as it had been earlier that day.

"Two identity discs with the names and regiments of men who served for the Confederacy, and a great deal more money than most people would carry around."

"I suppose they'll be wanting those wallets back."

Jim nodded. "Since you've proven yourself to be a thief when you're unsupervised, I don't plan on leaving you to your own devices any time soon."

Arte smiled carefully, pleased at the barb, and the underlying affirmation. He would not likely admit to it, but there was always a lingering fear whenever either of them was injured on the job. The normal adrenaline pumping, paranoia induced, otherwise-life-saving terror that so frequently got them out of jams, became a haunting specter when the jam proved to be too great.

Arte wasn't interested in doing anything on his own any time soon and he knew that Jim felt at least a little responsible for what had happened. They would work through all that when the case was said and done, but there wasn't time just yet. Knowing that Jim planned to keep a close eye on him was a reassurance that he had quietly needed.

"We'll need to report to Richmond..." Arte said, trailing off as both men considered the problem. What would they tell him?

"What proof do we have? Without the girls we can't connect those four men to Unger."

"And bringing them to light may well put Hannah and Louise in danger..." Arte added. "I don't want Colonel Richmond to become a second victim either, Jim, we have to tell him something."

"Why not the 'usual'."

Lies, in other words, Arte thought, and he nodded, then winced, then leaned back in the chair stretching abused muscles one by one, forcing his body to relax.

"Arte...what if..."

Brown eyes opened slowly, peering glassy at the blue-eyed man leaning forward.

Jim continued, "What if Louise really was your daughter?"

"It's not possible." Arte slurred. "She had to have been conceived two months before-"

"Babies can be born early, Arte. Even two months early and still survive. And how can you be sure of the exact dates. We're talking thirty years ago."

"Are you looking for an excuse to buy cigars, Jim?" Arte ground out, irritated but not entirely sure why.

"No." Jim sighed and scraped the palm of his hand over tired eyes, then turned on the settee, putting his feet up and laying back against the pillow. "No...I was just...looking for a silver lining I guess."

From the chair where he was nearly asleep Arte muttered, "Hmm?"

"Nothing...Good Night, Arte."

"NightJim."


	7. Chapter 7

Jim didn't sleep more than a few hours, waking in the dark of dawn. He quietly bathed in a basin in the kitchen, then dressed in the clothes he had taken from his berth the night before, armed himself and headed out into the city.

His first stop would be the Unger residence, which he found quiet and dark on Knob Hill but for a candle glowing in the kitchen. The maid, preparing breakfast.

Jim, dressed in a dark blue suit that for the moment allowed him to blend into the morning haze, remained hidden, watching the small mansion until the sun rose and Mrs. Unger and her children left on an early outing. He'd been there four hours before Joseph Unger left, on foot, headed for the steam car platform.

Jim followed at a leisurely pace, keeping a constant eye out for Unger's hired help. As Unger collected a newspaper and cigar, and took a chair on the terrace overlooking the famous hill, Jim noticed the man all in gray first, milling around the platform. The red-head was easy to spot after that, and then the gunhand. The fourth man, the Mick, he didn't see so much as hear.

A _click click_ and a gun was hastily pressed into his back. The Mick felt for the handle of Jim's weapon and removed it from the holster.

"Don't know who ye are fella, but ye spent entirely too much time in the bushes this mornin' to be just happenin' by."

Jim kept his hands casually in the open, watching the other three who had begun to close in through the light crowd. Unger seemed entirely oblivious, seated thirty feet away just over Jim's left shoulder.

"I was hoping to rob the milk man but he must have come around the back." West quipped, ignoring the irritating jab against his kidney.

"What's he want then?" Gray Suit asked, closing in on Jim's left side, his hand rattling around in a paper bag of peanuts before he popped a shelled legume into his mouth.

"Says he was gonna rob the milk man."

The Gun Hand, who seemed to be constantly fidgeting at all times, went still for half a second, confusion playing across his face. Big Red chuckled at the idea, sizing up the blue-suited stranger.

"And when that wee plan failed ye decided to trail the gentleman readin' a paper, see if he wasn't just as wealthy?" The Mick suggested.

At least one waiting passenger on the platform had glanced over at them, curious. Gun Hand was the only one to notice.

"Didn't work, did it?" Jim looked over his shoulder, getting a close up glance at the Mick. Hazel eyes, a scar running from the corner of one of them that was faint, very old. Graying hair, and a look of total control at all times.

"No, ye're a terrible thief." The Mick grinned, then patted Jim down finding the knife between his shoulder blades, the sleeve gun, and a second knife that he had sheathed in a boot. "I am startin' to think that ye aren't really a thief."

"Hired killer, maybe?" Gray Suit asked through a mouthful of peanuts.

"Sure, sent all the way from the East." The Mick said.

Jim opened his mouth to respond but was cut off by another jab.

"No, no, let me guess. Ye don't know what I'm talkin' about, and don't know who the gentleman is and won't say a word if we let you along on your merry way. Was that what ye were goin' to tell me?"

Jim smiled, winking at Big Red, then shook his head. "See fellas, I know full well that the only reason this little chat hasn't turned into a fight is because we're out in the open and your boss over there doesn't like his dirty laundry aired in public." Jim gritted his teeth as he bit, "But if you jab me in the back with that gun barrel one more time, this is going to get ugly, and not for me."

A round of chuckles went through the group but the Mick backed the gun barrel away, solving at least one of West's queries.

Unger was definitely the boss, and one that they either feared or respected enough to rein back on their tempers.

"Clever..." The Mick responded and Gray Suit chomped on the last of his peanuts, nodding. "Yeah, real smart. For a dumb guy."

"I don't like clever men, Mr..."

Jim stepped forward and turned to face the Mick, letting his hands drop to his sides. "Mills. James Mills."

"Mr. James Mills...a made up name if I ever heard one." The Mick responded then finally put his gun away. The threat it might have posed to other men, was pointless against this 'Mills' character and the Mick wasn't one to waste.

Jim shrugged but didn't say anything else.

"Why were ye watchin' the house this mornin', Mr. Mills."

"How else was I going to get an introduction? You beat up a hapless government man yesterday for knocking on the door, clearly that wasn't the way."

"D'ye hear that boys. Mr. Mills was watchin' our little show yesterday. We were so caught up in our fun, we didn't even notice."

"I could give you some pointers." Jim offered, then looked at the other men still standing in a close circle around him. "But it wasn't an introduction to you fellas that I wanted. I came to speak to Joseph Unger."

"_Captain _Joseph Unger, and if he wanted to speak to you, he would have told us."

"He doesn't know me." Jim responded. "But he's going to want to."

"Why is that?"

Jim paused, a slow grin spreading into a full on smile before he shook his head. "Introduce me, or I'll uh...introduce myself." Quietly he put his hands on his hips waiting for the response.

The Mick chuckled first, then the other three men. Before the laughter could die down Jim sank a fist into the Mick's stomach then turned kicking out at the right wrist of Gun Hand, back kicking Gray Suit in the chest and saving Big Red for last. He barreled head first into him, knocking him back and over a low bench before he turned to face The Mick. He had decided that the man wasn't the type to bring a gun into a fist fight and found he was right when the Irishman grit his teeth and charged. Jim threw a punch that should have connected with the Mick's eye, but the man had been expecting it and ducked under it, driving Jim into and over the same bench.

Jim carried the weight of their bodies through and rolled, kicking with his legs and tossing the Mick head over heels behind him, then scrambled to his feet and stomped down hard on the hand that Big Red was reaching toward a Bowie knife on his belt. Bones broke and Jim felt no remorse, remembering too well the deep bruises on his partner's arm.

He was sucker punched from behind, a hard fist digging into his ribs. Harder than any man's fist could possibly be. Jim turned, weaving under a second punch, caught a flash of light on brass knuckles and swung his fists, right then left, into Gray Suit's torso, then an uppercut and Gray Suit flew back into a large wooden crate designed to hold decorative flowers. The crate held but the late October blooms didn't and he was soon covered in yellow petals, out for the count.

Jim felt, more than saw, Gun Hand starting to rise, unable to use his weapon of choice because Jim's first kick had numbed his dominant hand, but he, like Big Red, carried a knife and he had pulled it, holding it edge-out along the forearm of his left hand.

Gray Suit was up too, but before either could do anything Unger spoke angrily from behind them.

"He should be dead and buried by now, Micklin. Instead he's taken out two of your men and disabled another. Pick them up and get rid of them, find better men before I replace you too."

The fight itself hadn't gone unnoticed, but the few onlookers that were there that early in the morning had done and said nothing, giving Unger a wary glance, but otherwise pretending not to see. He'd barely been there a week and already had a dangerous reputation, Jim thought, coming down off the high, recapturing his breath and letting his fists fall in slow increments.

"And you! Are you just here to cause a raucous or did you have a purpose?"

West straightened, giving Unger a once over before he sneered in disgust and turned to walk away. The minute he turned he could feel Unger's temperature rising, and it wasn't long before a feral "Hey!" was tossed his way. Jim stopped, turned and studied the man who pointed a finger at him, a gnarled and stumped finger that had been cut off at the first knuckle. The rest of that hand had no fingers at all. The other hand, clutching the newspaper, was also almost fingerless.

Other deformities became apparent. Gouges in his face, a slight limp, the way he held his back. All the result of injuries received in the War, Jim had no doubt. No wonder the man kept four body guards on the pay roll. The deft swordsman that Arte had described couldn't very well defend himself now, much less even hold a gun or pull a trigger.

Suddenly the odd stops began to make sense. A haberdasher would need time to specially fit a man with so many irregularities to his frame, and doctors with certain expertise might be needed if wounds never healed right, or for cosmetic reasons. Or simply the ironclad discretion that a doctor in the red district would be known for. There was a disconnect between the Joseph Unger of thirty-years-ago and the man before him, but Jim got the feeling it was only skin deep. Unger was still an angry, and potentially dangerous man, he just had more to be angry about.

"Your boys laid into a friend of mine who did nothing to deserve it. He was there to deliver something that belonged to you." Jim finally responded.

"Why didn't your...'friend' just mail this belonging of mine?" Unger asked, his mouth twisting around scar tissue that started where his lips met on the left side and curved up, nearly to the base of his ear.

"The government requires a face to face identification before it can deliver so much money to a former Captain in the United States Army."

That had Unger's attention and his stance changed, the man's shoulders going back.

"Pension money?"

"Back pay. At the special request of Colonel Richmond."

"Richmond. James Richmond?"

Jim didn't respond. A part of him wished he had brought the money with him so that he could hand it over and be done with it. He had planned for the morning to involve finding hard proof of Unger's guilt in some illegal trade or other. Something, anything, to get an official investigation underway. Instead he was finding that, while he still hated the man, Unger seemed more like a frightened and emotionally emasculated war veteran, than a crime lord.

"What identification do you need, then?" Unger finally asked.

"None...you were identified yesterday by the man who your men beat up in an alley." Jim turned, starting to walk away.

"The German?" Jim ignored the comment.

"With the fake mustache?" West's steps faltered just a little as he felt a chill go through him.

Perhaps emasculated was too hasty a description, and as he rode down the hill in the steam car, watching Unger until he disappeared Jim remembered that Unger had been an actor, a talented actor, before the war. The man who had described him that way was the best undercover man Jim knew.

* * *

"How did it go with Richmond?"

Jim moved a chair closer to the desk where Arte sat working and sat down with a sigh, loosing the buttons of his vest. The day wasn't half over but he felt as if he'd been awake twenty-four hours at least.

As to Arte's question he didn't know how to begin, and sat playing with a stray tuning fork until Arte kicked his ankle. He looked up to meet bloodshot and blackened eyes and felt a pang go through him. What followed was anger and regret. Anger at the men that beat his partner so thoroughly, and regret that he hadn't done a better job of giving the beating back ten fold.

"Richmond didn't want to hear it. I told him that you and Unger had a history together and that, for fear that his recognizing you might cause the situation to go out of control, you disguised yourself and called on the Unger household. The end result was a beating in an alley."

"...that could have been laid upon Richmond, or anyone else that he sent." Arte interrupted heatedly.

"I told him that."

"And?"

Jim looked away, toward a Mendeleev periodic table mounted on the wall, then to the table where Arte was crafting more smoke bombs. At the second delay Arte tossed the small funnel he was using onto the table and stiffly got to his feet. Before West could respond he was out the door and heading toward their berths. When Jim caught up with him, Arte was seated on his bed trying to pull on a boot.

"Where are you-"

"To see Richmond for myself."

"Arte, there's nothing you can say to him that I didn't. You shouldn't be awake, much less going anywhere. Will you-"

With one boot on, and the other in his good hand Arte had limped to the small closet and pulled out a coat. The weight of the article alone in his wounded hand was almost too much and Arte had to toss it over the other arm before he dropped it. When he turned to leave the small room Jim was standing in his way.

"Move."

"Not y-"

"Jim, move out of my way."

"Not yet, Arte, not till you sit down and let me finish."

In response Arte pushed his lips together and sighed through his nose before he dropped the coat and boot on the floor and with a barely disguised grateful sigh sat down on the bed. By the time Jim pulled up a chair and sat on it backward Arte had already laid down on the bed with a groan.

"Who was your hero, Artemus, when you were in the war?"

His partner had thrown a hand over his eyes and he spoke from beneath it after a moment's thought. "I didn't have heroes in the war." He was silent for a few beats, then moved his hand enough to open one eye and said, "Until I met General Grant, and some of the officers that served under him."

"There was a...a young man, a bugler, in my corp before I was requested to join Grant's staff." Jim paused and Arte turned and propped his head up, attentive. "He said he was sixteen, but he'd been claiming he was sixteen since he joined three years before. Feisty, red-haired kid. Piss and vinegar and crazy to boot. He...he idolized me, always wanted to ride or march next to me. Would come to my tent at night right before taps to make a report. I wasn't more than a corporal then..." Jim shook his head. "I could have been President Lincoln and he wouldn't have been more proud."

Arte was smiling softly, remembering his own share of kids...young, brash farm boys that were in it for the adventure. The more stupid and reckless an officer or non-com was, the more of a hero he became in their eyes. Until he died, of course. Those that didn't lose faith in heroes, generally died along with them.

"I knew he felt that way..." Jim continued, "But I didn't think about it, what it meant to him. Then one day I uh...I got drunk." Jim smirked a little. "Some of the boys had found a liquor wagon that was strictly off-limits. They had been told that any man seen approaching the wagon would be court martialed. So they waited til night fall and one of the boys crawled under the wagon, drilled a hole up through the wagon bed and right on through the barrels, drained them. We'd been encamped for months and winter was in full swing. There was nothing else to do but march in circles and wish we were home." West paused again, picking at the back of the chair with a finger nail. "That sort of boredom left plenty of time for an investigation and a trial and, several of the boys were found guilty and court martialed. Sent home. All but one.."

"The one that did the drilling.." Arte said knowingly, then pointed his finger at Jim's chest.

Jim pointed his own finger at himself and nodded. "I bragged about it too, after the fact. The kid refused to believe me for three weeks, until I proved it to him. Then he wouldn't speak to me again."

"A vigilante hero, unmasked." Arte said, laying back again and wincing as he did.

"I think I took myself off the pedestal on purpose, ya know, Arte."

"No one is perfect, Jim, we shouldn't expect it of others if we know it isn't possible in ourselves." Gordon was quiet for a moment before he sighed. "Your saying that Richmond isn't going to accept his hero being a murderer, or ordering a man to be beaten..."

"Or anything else we uncover. And having the evidence thrust undeniably before him..."

Arte closed his eyes, feeling the exhaustion he'd been trying not to acknowledge creeping up on him. Jim had a point, though. Richmond wasn't going to change his tune until Unger took himself off the pedestal. Until that happened trying to get Richmond's help would be an uphill battle that they frankly didn't have time for.

"Where do we go from here?" Arte asked, sleepily.

"I'm going to track down Hudson, and you're going to-" West was caught off by a soft snore, and he smirked briefly in triumph.

He had quietly left the room and was out the door and heading down the hall before he remembered something and returned to Arte's berth. Carefully Jim removed the one boot the man had managed to get on and covered his partner with a blanket before he closed the door to the berth and started making plans for his next foray into Cincinnati.

* * *

Two days later The Wanderer had left Pearl Street, and Cincinnati, headed south.

Thanks to the fine cooking and nursing of Louise and Hannah, and a good deal of forced rest due to James West, Arte was recovering rapidly. Their days aboard were spent collecting and organizing as much information about Sergeant Harold Hudson and Captain Joseph Unger as was possible before they got to the town of Marcum, Mississippi.

Hudson, Jim had discovered, had left Cincinnati the day after he sent the telegram warning West and Gordon of the trouble the girls had found themselves in. The girls had been gracious enough to go with him as Jim tracked Hudson's activities. A combination of West's intelligence and the girl's archeological skills allowed them to Hudson's home, a small apartment emptied of necessities but otherwise undisturbed. Hudson had left in a hurry.

He had then purchased a ticket on a steam boat heading down river. His destination had been Marcum, Mississippi. A tiny town, according to the ticket salesman. Usually not even a stop on the passenger route, which was what had made Hudson's ticket stand out.

The minute Hannah and Louise heard the name both agreed that it was familiar. It wasn't until that evening that Louise remembered the archeological expedition she and her sister had been on, a few months prior. The small tug boat they had found submerged in the Mississippi mud, a 30-year-old vessel bearing bodies and bullet holes, had been just outside Marcum.

"What happened to the find?" Jim asked, as the three rode in a hack up the hill to Pearl Street.

"It was hauled up aboard a trawler and taken down river to a marine archeology school run by the professor heading the dig." Hannah explained.

"The bodies were something of a surprise and the professor told us that he would be checking with local authorities to see if there were any unsolved murders or disappearances. I remember the professor was very concerned that anyone without answers concerning their loved ones, be allowed to find peace if possible." Louise continued.

"But as the boat itself had sunk so very long ago..." Hannah shook her head and shrugged. "Even then there was very little hope that the bodies would be identified."

"Artemus told me you had identified the genders..."

Hannah nodded and Louise said, "A woman and a man, both mature. That was all we could determine."

Talking privately with Arte later, Jim repeated the name of the town.

"Faintly familiar, why do you ask?"

"You said that you worked at a print shop in a town along the Mississippi, and it was there that the Monica II burned and you and Anna Unger were nursed back to health."

"Yes."

"Hudson left a day after he sent us the wire and booked passage to Marcum. I think he may be trying to re-open his investigation of Anna's death."

"But why Marcum? Even if that is the same town, after giving birth, Anna was there no more than a day's time before she was taken by Unger down river."

"In a tug boat?"

"That was all that was left of the Monica...II..." Arte's eyes widened and Jim simply nodded as his partner caught on. "You think the tug boat the girls found on their dig was the tug boat Joseph and Anna Unger disappeared with."

"Anna's body was never found?" Jim asked.

"According to my brief conversation with Hudson, no."

"If the girls told Hudson about the dig, there's no reason to assume he wouldn't come to the same conclusion." West said.

"If he knew that we had the same goal in mind; to find evidence to prove Anna was murdered, and put Unger behind bars, why wouldn't he inform us of his intentions?"

Jim had no answer for that. That evening they made plans, decided how they were going to explain their upcoming absence to Richmond and then brought their intentions to the girls.

Had they even considered trying to leave Hannah and Louise behind in Cincinnati the girls would have had nothing of it. It was their life, their past and their mother and they had no reason for, or interest in, remaining in Cincinnati.

Marcum could not be reached directly by train, as it had been built on the river. When the railroads began to move south and west many towns, with well established river trade, chose not to allow the railroads in. Marcum had been one such municipality and their decision had unfortunately meant that the town became largely forgotten. River traffic was not as fast or as reliable as the railroad and the town had remained relatively small as a result.

After a brief discussing West and Gordon decided that it would be wisest for one of them to go ahead. If Hudson had remained in the town they would invite him out to the station where the train had found a siding, and hopefully gain more answers and a partnership. If Hudson had pressed on there was no point in the four of them hiring a buggy to travel the ten miles only to turn back. Arte had rolled the name of the town around in his mind for a fortnight before deciding that it might just be the small town in which he learned to use a printing press, and after some discussion insisted that he be the one to travel to Marcum.

Knowing the town he would better be able to decide if it was a safe place to bring Hannah and Louise and, further, Hudson knew Arte. He wouldn't recognize Jim or his intentions without a great deal of convincing. Both West and Gordon knew that the reprieve Richmond had given them would not last long, thus time was of the essence.

The morning after they parked the train on the siding Arte took his mare down the ramp of the equine car and stiffly rode her into the cool October fog. At walking speed he would reach Marcum by mid-morning. If possible he would wire The Wanderer from there.

Jim, Hannah and Louise would use the time to try to contact the professor they had assisted, and ask after the tugboat.

* * *

It was the same town. Yet it wasn't the same. The dock had changed, expanded and been rebuilt. Five year old damage caused by a fire had encouraged some new growth on main street. Miraculously the building that had housed the printing press, newspaper and his old apartment still stood.

It was a Sunday and the town was quiet, most of the residents packed into the small school-house and church that sat up a slight incline and surrounded by oak and young dogwood trees. A quick glance around the town revealed that the local law shared a building with a telegraph and post depot. Arte hitched his horse in front of the clapboard structure that marked the southern most end of main street and considered the town, basking in the strange, unexpected silence. A silence broken only by the distant, off-key singing of a hymn.

He closed his eyes and could hear the echo of songs of a showboat cast, ringing across the open docks, beckoning one and all to see the greatest show on the river. He could remember Anna's eyes, her lips, the curl of her hair. The way her face had brightened when she first saw through the old man disguise and saw Arte, no Sandy, for who he truly was. He remembered feeling the faintest glimmer of hope then. Crushed quickly by the appearance of Joseph Unger on the stairs.

"If it's the Gould boys that beat you up, Mister, there ain't much I can do about it. Them kids know the countryside like mother's teats, and won't come out for anythin' if they're of a mind?"

Arte opened his eyes and took in what passed for a Sheriff in the town of Marcum. He was very surprised to find himself staring at a woman. Perhaps in her forties, a foot shorter than Gordon and solidly built, she had a mass of reddish, graying curls cut short and stuffed under a wide-brimmed hat. A button nose and round face, with half-moon lips, helped her look younger than the gray in her hair would suggest, and seemed to spite the wrinkles on her freckled face. She wore a man's dress shirt and a plain brown skirt with a belt. Arte had the feeling that the skirt was a concession to it being Sunday, and not part of her regular attire. Whether it was temporary or permanent she had a Sheriff's badge pinned to the left side of the cow hide vest she wore and a gun strapped around her waist, hanging over the skirt.

"You're the Sheriff of Marcum?" Arte asked, snatching his hat from his head belatedly. The woman snorted at the act, amused but not mocking.

"I am. For five years running if you can believe it. So was it the Gould boys?" The woman asked, swatting her hand toward his face.

He caught on a second later and touched the healing bruises around his eyes before he shook his head. "No, I...fell off my horse." Arte didn't know why he lied, but he did. He knew it, and the lady Sheriff knew it, but she didn't press. "What is your name...Miss?"

"Mrs. Julia Stone. My husband, Wilson, was the Sheriff until five years ago."

"Artemus Gordon. Your husband, he passed on?"

The woman smiled wryly at the term then pointed toward the docks. "The Ol' Lady took him one night, the drunken louse. Sorta glad too. He was dying of the consumption anyway. Drowning was faster. You just passing through, or do you wanna come in and set a spell?"

Already liking the woman Arte smiled and bowed slightly, indicating that she should lead the way into the office. As he entered he could see that she was something of a one woman band. Only one chair sat in an office that was divided into three areas, one devoted to the job of keeping law and order, and the other two to the post office and telegraph. The latter appeared to be in good working order and after Arte asked for permission, he leaned over the key and tapped out a message to The Wanderer that was promptly returned.

His message, "Arrived. No Hudson yet. Stand by."

Jim's answer, "Understood."

"Not everybody can set down to a key and tap somethin' out without thinkin' about it first. You in the signal corps?"

"Not necessarily." Arte hedged then looked around the rest of the room. Unless there had been something built behind the building the jail appeared to be without bars or cells. The post office was in excellent condition, and the room was clean and warm. "You run the post office as well?"

Sheriff Julia Stone nodded, leaning her hip against the desk on the 'jail' side of the room. "I have three sons all of whom run the mail out to the farms and I mostly do the route here in town. Mail goes out and comes in on the river. I don't s'pose you're askin' because you're meaning to move into town..."

Arte shook his head, still looking around the room, admittedly impressed by the organization and fortitude the woman possessed.

"S'pose you're here to ask about Hudson?"

Arte's focus snapped back to Julia, noticing for the first time that the woman's eyes were a light hazel hue. He could see a glimmer of satisfaction in them, but her face remained neutral. For a moment he was at a loss then he realized, "The telegraph..."

Julia did smile that time, a tiny stretching of the lips. "Before my husband went for a long swim I was just the post mistress and telegrapher. Been doin' that for ten years. And..."

Arte waited as the woman opened a desk drawer without moving from her perch. She dug through the piles of paper within and pulled out a folder with a metal tab holding its contents together.

"Hudson was through here three days ago." Julia Stone plopped the folder on the desk top then moved to a small pot belly in the corner responding to some innate sixth sense and pulling the pot of coffee from its surface moments before the loose top began jump in response to the boiling liquid inside. She poured the coffee into two cups and handed one to Arte before she continued. "Your Mr. Hudson wanted to know what I had in our files from thirty years ago. Said he used to work as a deputy in this town back then. When I told him we wouldn't have anything from so far back he was quick to move on. After he left I got to thinkin' about it and decided to go through the one building that existed thirty years ago-"

"The print shop." Arte said and Julia Stone nodded.

"The printer and the newspaper and all that moved on long ago, but the newspapers stayed, packed up in crates until the building was bought out by a new owner."

"New owner?"

Julia nodded and handed Arte the folder. "My husband bought it when he first moved here. Turned the main floor into a show room, wanted to make fancy carvings for headstones. Wanted people from all corners of the nation to come to Marcum to buy his little carved angels and cherubs and so on. Business folded in less than a year. Anyway...we kept all them newspapers, figuring someday they'd be useful."

Arte opened the folder he was given, taking a sip from the hot cup in his hands before he set it down and focused on the faded print. He'd been unconscious that day, barely clinging to life, he thought as he read the news articles printed the morning after the Monica II burned to the water line. "Showboat Captain and Young Wife Rescued From Conflagration" the headline read, and underneath the article expounded on how lucky it was that the majority of the cast had been on shore that evening. To his surprise he had rated a mention. "Young, local printer's apprentice Charlie Gordon was also rescued by the tug Hercules, which had broken away from the Monica II before the fire was able to reach it. Gordon was severely wounded and is recovering under the care of Doctor Weeks, along with Mr. and Mrs. Unger and her one year old daughter, Anna."

The article had misunderstood the names of the family, but had made sure to include something. Arte wondered how badly wounded Unger had been, why Unger had chosen to flee the town instead of finishing him off. Arte wondered if he had in fact tried, but failed. Then a smaller article in the next day's paper announced the birth of a 'miracle baby' to Mrs. Analise Unger, "who was so recently rescued from near death aboard the ill-fated Monica II." The baby was born very small and very blue and the surgeon, it was said, was positive that the baby would not last the night, but by morning she was wailing to be nurtured, and mother and baby were reported as healthy.

A day later, Arte remembered, Joseph and his family would have disappeared along with the Hercules.

As Arte continued to dig through the articles that Julia Stone had collected, she spoke. "I wasn't here when all that happened, but the way the old timers 'round here talk, there wasn't anything else that happened that year nearly as exciting as the show boat fire. Mr. Hudson didn't really tell me why he wanted law records, but I figured it would have something to do with that show boat, or maybe the tug boat that up and disappeared." Mrs. Stone paused, chewing over something thoughtfully before she took a breath and said, "I'm not one to talk outta turn or make hay out of what might be nothin' at all. But I have plenty of long lonely nights 'round here, and I spent a lot of time diggin' through them records. I never did find a mention of a deputy or any other such lawman named Hudson for that year, or the year before and the year after. Not in this town anyway."

Arte felt a sick feeling run through him that only deepened the ache in the taut muscles of his back. "Do you mind if I keep these, Mrs. Stone?"

"S'pose not. If you wouldn't mind seein' that they get back to me. Started collecting the interestin' articles, births and deaths, pastin' 'em in some books. Figure folks might care to know some of it, once those that remember it pass on."

"I'll see it to it that no harm comes to them." Arte promised, then excused himself. He was nearly out the door before Julia called.

"There was a Charlie Gordon mentioned in one of them articles. You any relation?"

Arte smiled wanly to himself, then stepped out the door, not surprised that Julia Stone made no move to follow. He had a feeling he'd be seeing her again soon enough. Once he had packed the news articles into the saddle bags Arte turned his horse toward the road out of town and didn't look back until he had put at least three miles under the horse's hooves. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had awakened a slumbering beast known as the past, and that the beast was soon going to be breathing down his neck.


	8. Chapter 8

The three miles of road that he had covered were taking him south, following the path of the river. He'd assumed that he was following the path that Hudson had taken out of town. It was another mile before Arte realized that he had forgotten to ask how Hudson had left Marcum. On foot, horseback? Had he rented a buggy or bought further passage on the riverboat?

It was a stupid question to have overlooked. Gordon kicked his horse into a time eating gallop, arriving back in Marcum just as the last of its citizens disappeared into their homes for their afternoon meals.

He did what he could to slap away the dust he'd accumulated on his clothes, before he opened the door to Sheriff Stone's office. He was surprised to find the room empty, but then it was Sunday at supper time, why should she stay? And in a tiny town with very little crime why would she lock the door when she left?

It wasn't until he found the pot of coffee boiling over, spilling and crusting on the still hot stove that he decided Stone had left in a hurry. He managed to move the raging pot away from the heat without burning himself and surveyed the room. There were no tracks, very little on the floor or out of place at first glance.

Then he noticed the letters that had been shoved back into the pigeon holes of the sorting shelf upside down, bent and haphazard. The desk too had been treated roughly, hard enough to have torn one of the handles off, a handle he remembered Stone using when she opened the corresponding drawer. The handle had been tossed into the drawer itself before the desk was set right.

An altercation, but someone had taken the time to make the room look untouched before leaving. He searched for blood or, heaven forbid, a body before he moved to the telegraph.

It, of course, had been shattered.

Arte could see the attack in his mind's eye, and he couldn't see Sheriff Stone coming out of it unscathed. None the less he pulled open the door in the rear of the building. If she had been able to escape, she might have gone into the shielded alley. Checking the length of the buildings built wall to wall, Arte armed himself as he stepped into the dirt.

The buildings of main street had been erected against a slight rise, mostly covered in silt and scraggly weeds. A few dogwood trees had struggled to grow out of the shadows cast by the false fronts, but there was very little in the way of brush cover. The packed dirt showed no sign of recent activity. He'd gone halfway down the alley before he noticed two sets of prints, one much smaller than the other, continuing down the row of buildings at a running pace.

The prints had come from the back door of the newspaper office.

Arte straightened and pulled back the hammer of his sidearm, moving to the thin wooden door that stood slightly ajar. He used the tips of his fingers to push the door in , staying well out of the way of the opening. When there was no response from inside Arte crouched and shoved the door all the way open, then launched his body through the gap, rolling on a shoulder and scrambling back upright.

The back room of the newspaper office was packed full of crates, parts of printing presses, and marble slabs untouched by a chisel. An aisle, barely wide enough for a person to walk through, led to a second door. He opened it with the same caution, but the room was just as devoid of life. It had also been ransacked, and, he realized a moment later, the random piles of torn newspaper had been soaked in kerosene. The room reeked of it. An arson in progress that Sheriff Stone had walked in on?

But who, and why? Was it possible that Unger's men had followed them to Marcum? If Unger knew that there was evidence remaining either in the small town, or on the tugboat itself, he would of course do all that he had to in order to keep that evidence from coming to light. Of this, Arte had no doubt. But how could he have possibly made the connection between an obscure archeological dig - about which he could have known nothing - and the murder he had committed thirty years before.

Gordon didn't like how omniscient the man seemed to be, and could feel his heart beating faster and harder. He had turned to retreat back through the small storage room when the lamp to the right of his head exploded, showering him with glass and yet more kerosene. Thankfully it had been unlit. Spitting kerosene from his mouth Arte went into a crouch and flew into the darker recesses of the storage room. A second shot was sent whining into the darkened doorway and Arte heard it clatter off the surface of one of the uncarved tombstones.

He heard voices, neither of them sounding familiar or friendly, and decided that he no longer felt welcome. Crawling through the dark until he was inches from the door to the alley, Arte waited, listening.

"...probably some local. Light it, then, and let's get out already."

He no more wanted the newspaper office to catch fire than he did himself. Arte sent two shots through the storage room door then bolted out into the alley. Not a man to ignore the past, Arte fully expected to find more goons waiting behind the building and was shocked to see the narrow, country lane deserted. Up the slight incline and over a mound of weed strewn earth Arte could see the roof of the stable and ran for it, checking his back trail before he broke into the open.

He crossed the ground quickly and ducked into the barn.

"Well, if it isn't our little German friend..."

Arte spun, turning back toward the open barn door, straightening his back and pointing his gun as one would a dueling pistol. He was prepared to fire until he noticed the lit lantern in the hand of the Mick, held high enough that any fatal shot would mean that the lantern would shatter and the barn would go up fast. The building had been built into the hillside and there were very few exits other than the barn door that didn't involve climbing or falling. Arte's eyes had begun to water, his stomach twisting in response to the small amount of flammable liquid he had swallowed. He spat, desperately wishing he could rinse his mouth.

"Only ye've shaved off yer mustache."

Arte narrowed his eyes but said nothing, certain the Mick was toying with him. The Irishman soon had a pistol brandished in his other hand, though Arte noticed, he'd pulled the piece with a slight wince.

"You left Cincinnati so quickly. Took a hell of a lot of convincin' to get the station master to tell us where you'd gone." The Mick paused, expecting a response, but Arte gave him none. The two men he'd heard in the old news office had to have been replacements for Gun Hand and Grey Suit. That left only the tall ginger.

"The train...now that was no difficulty to find. After all, not many people have their own private locomotive and varnish car."

Red Head had joined the Mick and had pulled a knife, but held it awkwardly in his left hand. His right had been bound tightly in several layers of bandages and Arte noticed the giant bruise the man was sporting on his jaw.

"The two lovely ladies enjoying ye're hospitality however..." Despite himself, Arte reacted, and the Mick sneered in satisfaction. "They were quick to tell us about this little town, the old man you were tracking..."

There was a soft feminine groan from behind him, but Arte kept his focus on the Mick. For a moment he expected that the Irishman had brought either Hannah or Louise with him to persuade Arte into cooperating. When he was finally able to glance at the two new goons carrying a woman between them he was surprised to see Sheriff Stone. Her blouse torn, her skirts marred by manure, hay and dirt; there was a trickle of blood slipping from the corner of her mouth and she would have a shiner on her cheekbone by morning. Her eyes opened, caught sight of Arte, then closed again before she drew in a deep breath and planted her feet on the ground, taking some of her own weight.

"Mr. Gordon..." Julia Stone said and the Mick smiled.

"Yes. Gordon. That was the name I couldn't remember. Both Hannah and Louise had nothin' but good things to say about you, and about your partner who, sadly wasn't able to join us. But given the message we left behind, I'm certain he's on his way."

"You heartless kreton!" Arte growled, taking two steps forward before the Mick raised his hand again, the hand holding the lantern.

"This barn is dry, the hay is prime and that newspaper office has a trail of kerosene leadin' right here. You reek of it yourself, Gordon. The barn won't be the only thing to go up. Shall we burn down the entire town of Marcum or are you interested in cooperatin'?"

"What do you want?"

"Papers."

"Ha! They're gone." The quick response, without denial or avoidance, caught the Mick off guard and Arte took a step back and toward Julia Stone.

"Gone. Not possible. Ye're a government man. Government men need evidence to prove their claims. You wouldn't have come all this way only to destroy the one piece of evidence you so desperately need."

Arte smiled, forcing his lips into a grotesque mimicry of the expression, and chuckled. The two rookie goons shifted uncomfortably, eyeing one another. "The 'only piece of evidence I need?" Arte laughed. His lips and throat had started to burn, along with the skin that was touching his kerosene soaked clothing. The constant minor irritation was fueling his willingness to push the boundaries of the situation. The crazed laugh wasn't that far off. "Unger is a murderer. He murdered his wife, cast out his daughters and probably murdered his second wife as well. I have more than enough evidence to see him hanged."

The more he spoke the more honest confusion he saw on the faces of the Mick and the Red Head, and certainly in the wide eyes of the two new goons. The Mick recovered swiftly and chuckled, a rapid staccato sound.

"Murder!? The man is a war hero. Any killing he did was in the name of the glorious Union! Why else would a government man come to call with his back pay?" The Irishman paused. "Or are ye talkin' about the accusations levied against him years ago?"

"He's a murderer, plain!" The new voice shouted from the yard outside the barn and Arte heard the snap of a shotgun barrel locking against the grip. The double-click of two hammers. "He mortally wounded his wife and left her to burn alive on board the Hercules. There was nothing left of her or Lyle Waggoner, but ashes sinking to the bottom of the Mississippi."

"Hudson!" Arte called. "Don't shoot him. He's got a lit kerosene lantern. Like his boss, he's fond of setting fires."

"Ye're accusing him of arson now, too?" The Mick said with a quiet disbelief. "My, my...Captain Unger told me one of you two had a vendetta against him, though he didn't know why. Let's see...Hudson, you say?" The Mick tossed a glance over his shoulder and Hudson finally stepped into view ten feet outside the barn, keeping his gun pointed at the Mick. He looked like he hadn't bathed or changed since Arte last saw him. "That man's name is not Hudson."

"Shut up, Potato-masher and put down the lantern nice and slow." Hudson shouted, his voice holding all the authority that a man of twenty or so years experience on the force should have.

"What was the name of that serial killer, Ian? The one that Captain Unger said he witnessed murderin' his wife?" The Mick asked, eyeing Arte with a knowing look.

"Hetsy." Red Head smirked, "Harold Hetsy."

"Good, Ian. Ye remembered this time." And Red Head responded like a pup being praised.

Harold Hudson had been approaching slowly, his eyes roving more wildly the closer he got. Moments after Red Head fell silent Hudson had gotten close enough to dig the barrels of the shot-gun into Red Head's back and the man stiffened, the smile disappearing quickly.

"I told ya to shut up, didn't I?" Without much else in the way of warning Hudson pulled one of the triggers and Red lived up to his moniker in an entirely different way. It was gruesome, sudden and terrifying. Arte remembered hearing a voice shout, remembered Sheriff Stone letting out a scream then collapsing to the ground, then all hell broke loose.

Both of the new goons dove for cover, leaving Stone where she lay on the floor. The Mick threw the lantern hard away from him, turned his gun on Hudson, fired, then ran out of the barn. Hudson was too close to the Mick, and had been nearly belly to belly with Red. The old veteran took the shot high on his chest, spinning and falling to the straw that covered the barn floor.

Arte knelt, grabbed Sheriff Stone by an arm pit and lifted her until her chest rested on his knee. He tugged her arm over his shoulders, jammed his thumb into the waist band of her skirt and hauled upright, firing twice at the stall the new goons had hidden behind and getting out of the barn as quickly as possible.

Seconds later the lantern exploded and fire roared at the back of the building, but Arte was too busy searching for cover to care. He crossed open ground quickly, got to the mound of earth and shrubbery that backed the buildings on main street and climbed the small rise far enough that he could lay Stone out on the ground, then tip her over the other side.

She rolled, loose and gentle, down the opposing slope and into the soft arms of a thicket of ferns. Arte left her there and went back to the barn, stopping with his shoulders pressed against the south wall and poking his head around the corner. He was in time to watch the new goons scramble out the front door of the barn. He tried darting into the open but gun shots answered his footsteps and he was forced back.

Frustrated, his lips numb, the image of Red's belly bursting open with buckshot still horribly fresh in his mind, Arte screamed, "I can't let him burn to death! Let me get Hudson out!"

A chorus of gun shots answered his plea, chipping away at the corner of the barn and forcing him back further along the wall.

"I served with Ian in the war, Mr. Gordon! We all did under the command of Captain Joseph Unger. We fought valiantly!" The Mick shouted. "He didn't deserve to be cut in half from behind."

More gun shots, then a pause, likely to re-load. The discrepancy struck Arte a second later, even as he heard the first of many beams start to creak inside the burning building.

"You fought for the Confederacy!" Arte shouted, remembering the wallets he had stolen. The identification chips that Jim had found.

"Aye!" The Mick responded, "Fer freedom from tyranny."

Unger was a traitor. It slapped Arte like a hand across the mouth, and he was flabbergasted. Unger was a traitor. Perhaps it had begun before the man was listed dead at Gettysburg. Perhaps he had turned following a devastating injury in Pennsylvania. There was no way to know but the bottom line was, Unger had disappeared and remained hidden for over a decade because he had become a turncoat for the South halfway through the war.

Was that what the goons were for? Was that where Unger's paranoia came from? Was that why a simple government accountant had so quickly earned a beating?

A part of Arte still whole heartedly believed that Unger had murdered Anna, yet...Unger would be just as equally bound for jail if it was proven that he had turned traitor. No wonder he had shown less than the proper interest in the back pay. Now more than ever Arte knew he had to save the newspaper office. He could hear Hudson's pained moans over the crackle of the flames, and wasn't about to let the sergeant down either.

"Hetsy was a murderer, Mr. Gordon. He isn't worth saving." The Mick's voice sounded again.

"Up till now you've been protecting the interest's of your commanding officer. I understand that kind of loyalty, and so will the courts. But Unger is a murderer. He did his best to kill me. He killed his wife...you can't hope to fight for a man like that and avoid the noose."

"Help...help me please...someone..." The cries were barely audible above the creak of burning wood, and the occasional roar as the fire found the hay loft. Arte did his best to ignore it as he scanned the wall above and behind him for an entry point. He spotted the axe a moment later and holstered his gun. Swinging the blade at the spaces between each board he managed to pry some of the nails loose.

"Ye don't see what's right before yer eyes, Gordon. Ye only see what ye're wantin' to see. I'll let you save that man's life, if he confesses to his crimes."

Arte paused in what he was doing not certain he'd heard right. He dropped the axe and pulled his weapon again running to the corner of the barn. The Mick and his remaining henchmen had taken up positions on the hill that rose away from the barn. A mill had been constructed against the hillside and further up he could see troughs carrying water to the paddle wheel that operated the grind stone. He thought he could see a hat behind one of the troughs, another man was moving the door of the mill and the Mick sounded like he might have been on the roof.

Arte aimed carefully and tagged the hat of the man behind the water trough. It flew up and back and the gunman screamed and ducked even lower behind his cover. A flurry of gunshots responded and Arte retreated back to where he had left the axe, swinging it now with a fury borne of desperation. Smashing the boards or tearing them from the structure until he had a hole big enough to crawl through.

As he forced himself into the barn he felt a jagged nail dig into his shoulder, tearing a hole in the cloth of his jacket, and scouring a line of heat across his deltoid. He ignored it and kept low to the floor, already coughing on the thick smoke that was trying to escape through the ragged opening he'd just created. He cleared the stall he'd broken into in time for a beam to snap. The fire was on the opposite side of the barn but the stress of the extreme heat had caused the tightly fitted pieces to expand and warp. Pockets of air would explode, weakening the beams further until they could no longer support the weight of the roof.

The integrity of the barn was deteriorating quickly and whatever happened on the burning side was usually mirrored on the opposite side. The beam that snapped tore down its corresponding partner and Arte was forced to guess which way to roll, wedging himself under the steel barrel of a wheel barrow. The beam struck, punching an imprint into the steel, then rolled away and suddenly the oppressive heat was closer.

The fire was like the inside of a timpani during a performance of Wagner; loud, insistent and ever pressing. Arte maneuvered through the maze of fallen, and partially fallen, beams and found Hudson mere feet from the main door of the barn. The wound on his chest had soaked the front of his shirt with blood but Arte could see it was too high to have hit his heart. The man's breathing was labored and his eyes were still open, he moved his jaw, words too quiet to be heard spilling out in a steady trickle.

There was no resistance when Gordon grabbed the older man's arms, pulling him upright to a sitting position. There was no blood on the back of his shirt, the cloth greasy and soaked with sweat. Hudson probably stank to high heaven but with the smoke he was choking on Arte couldn't smell anything. Artemus tugged the man over one shoulder, frustrated at how limp he was. Clearly Hudson was conscious yet he made no effort to rise, stand, or support himself. None the less Arte managed to get him over one shoulder, and struggled to his feet, the asphyxiating quality of the smoke robbing him of equilibrium.

His eyes were watering anew, he could barely breathe and he could hear the burning wall of the barn creaking like it was ready to fall. There wasn't time for niceties, or surrender, or worrying about things like crazed killers just outside prepared to gun him down. Arte pulled his gun, fired blindly up at the mill and ran.

The first breath of blessedly clear air nearly knocked him down, but he held on, bulling forward until there were hands pulling at Hudson's body, tugging at Arte, and voices that sounded like they wanted to help. He couldn't see to know where he'd run to, or who the people were. They were tugging his jacket off his shoulders, and he tried, through rounds of chest warping coughs, to tell them that Sheriff Stone was hurt and down in the ditch behind Main Street.

"Arte!"

The voice came out of the hubbub like a siren's call and Arte reached out a hand blindly until it was grasped by a familiar fist. A moment later a canteen was pressed to his lips and he drank, following the voice's advice to go slow and careful.

"You've got blood all over, Arte, are you hurt?"

Gordon shook his head, gasping as he swallowed, managing, "S'not mine." Before he was demanding the canteen again.

Another voice instructed, "Put this over his eyes." And presently he felt a cool, wet cloth pressing against eyelids that he hadn't realized were burning.

"My jacket..."

"We had to take it off you, Arte, it was smoldering."

"There are papers inside..." Arte winced against the crack in his throat, wishing he could submerge himself in the river entirely. "Papers that Unger wanted. The newspaper office-"

"Hang on Arte, slow down." Jim backed away, his voice sounding again distantly and Arte began to realize that some of the roaring he'd been hearing was the sound of water crashing through a hose on to the parts of the barn not fully engulfed. "I got 'em. Newspaper clippings?"

Artemus nodded, drank again, then tugged the cloth covering his eyes free and wiped the cool dampness over his face. When he opened his eyes they hurt but he could see through the haze. "Sheriff Stone?"

"They've got her, she's a little beat up but she'll be fine."

Arte put out a hand and caught Jim's sleeve. "Louise and Hannah?"

When Jim didn't immediately reassure him, Arte turned to face him. West's lips were pressed together in a hard line and he sighed. "They're gone, Artemus, missing. I don't know where they went."

"Hey! Hey, are you Gordon?"

The man asking had shouted from where a crowd of men had gathered around Hudson and Jim immediately started helping Arte back to his feet. They walked together across the ground, dust swirling in the winds created by the conflagration, until Arte was kneeling by Hudson's side.

The man's eyes were open, his lips coated with his own blood. He'd been turned on his side and the doctor looking him over had a grim expression. He looked up, cataloguing Arte's injuries even as he spoke. "This man was calling for you. He may not have long. The bullet bounced, it's wedged against his spine. He can't move, you'll have to prop his head up."

Arte and Jim situated quickly, Hudson's eyes constantly roving, taking up the slack for a body that had quit on him.

"You can't let me die. You can't. They have to know. They have to see. He was an evil man. He had to be stopped. You can't...Mr. Gordon. You can't let me die."

"Arte, is this?"

"Sergeant Hudson. The Irishman that leads Unger's little army shot him point-blank." There was very little left to Arte's voice. What remained was a rasping whisper.

"You can't...they have to know. Hannah and Louise they...deserved a father that loved them. They didn't know what Anna knew. Even Unger didn't know. It wasn't her fault. She didn't have a choice...she...she had to do it. Or he would have killed her."

"You need to rest, you need to save your strength." Arte tried, pressing his hand down over the still bleeding chest wound. The doctor had moved on, carefully looking over the injuries that Sheriff Stone had sustained. He seemed disinterested in the plight of the sergeant, as if the man were already a cooling corpse. "We'll get Unger, we can put him in jail for desertion and treason."

"Treason?" Jim asked, looking at his partner in surprise.

Arte nodded, trying to think of a way to quickly explain, but he was cut off.

"No...they have to know...he...isn't their father. Neither of them. Anna, she told me. He couldn't...he couldn't..." Hudson's next words were cut off by a spasm of pain that had him gasping desperately for breath. It was as if he were choking on his own blood, but his breaths were clear enough and no more blood had appeared, neither was the wound sucking the way it would if the bullet had punctured a lung.

"He couldn't...what..have children?" Jim asked and to their surprise, Hudson nodded.

"Anna told me...she told...she loved...me. She asked me to...she begged me. He would have hurt her...kept hurting her...because he couldn't.."

Hudson's body had started to vibrate, a continuous convulsion that Arte knew he had no control over; as if Hudson's brain was trying to get final signals to nerve endings that could no longer respond.

"For heaven's sake, will you see to this man!?" Arte demanded, struggling to keep Hudson from rattling out of his grasp. The doctor approached but said and did nothing, light blue eyes cold as winter under bushy gray eyebrows.

"Hudson, hang on. Please-"

Hudson was dead. His lips had quickly gone blue, his face paling as he convulsed, his body running out of air because the lungs could no longer hear the brain's command to expand. The man had died, had drowned, on dry land. Arte let the body rest and staggered to his feet ready to tear the doctor's unfeeling head from his shoulders, but Jim was there to stop him.

"You couldn't have done something?" Arte demanded, his tortured vocal chords distorting his words.

"There was nothing to be done. Nothing for the likes of him anyway." The doctor's jaw tightened, muscles bulging where the two bones hinged. "That man was a rapist and a philanderer. He beat Sheriff Stone, or did you bother to find that out while you were listening to his pack-of-lies dying confession?"

Arte settled back, felt Jim's grip on him loosen a little, both men glancing to the woman who was being helped stiffly to her feet.

"Why would he-"

"Maybe he thought she knew who he was. Who he'd been 30 years ago." The doctor accused, then narrowed his eyes nodding to himself. "Julia warned me there might be trouble the first day that man came around asking about the showboat fire. Sparked all kinds of memories for me. That young pregnant woman, and the young man who was running the paper at the time. He'd gone and gotten himself sliced up and shot on that boat. That _was_ you, wasn't it?"

An eerie, high-pitched screech interrupted them all, and every eye turned as the last of the burning timbers fell into the hole that the volunteer fire brigade had created. Smoke still poured upward like a waterfall in early spring, but the flames had died, and the risk to the rest of the town had been reduced to nothing.

"That's twice that man has done damage to this town, and both times you've been right there with him. I have half a mind, as volunteer deputy, to lock you up. As it is, since I'm also the town doctor, I've got plenty of patchin' to do, on you and the Sheriff." The doctor, Dr. Weeks, Arte realized, sounded more confident about his 'patching up' abilities than his position as deputy, but Arte was too lost, and too desperate for clarity, to dispute it. As Jim helped him follow the men assisting Sheriff Stone, Arte did his best to explain the past ten hours.

"The Irishman and at least two of his cronies are still out there." Jim responded, watching the hill behind the water-mill even as they walked away from it.

"And Louise and Hannah..."

"I'll find 'em, Arte. That is if you can make it from here to the doc's without burning anything else-"

Arte gave him a weak smile then pulled his arm back and took his own weight. Jim quietly disappeared into the crowd and was soon gone.

The doctor's office had changed but the corner bed that Arte spent almost three weeks recovering in had not. The same quilt, faded by time, lay over the same mattress, patched and probably re-stuffed. The same pillows, the same worn out sampler hanging on the wall. Everything clean but worn. Weary.

As the other men in the town were needed to help fully snuff the dwindling fire they left Sheriff Stone in Arte and Doctor Week's care. After Julia was settled on the bed in the back Arte was ordered to remove his kerosene soaked clothing and was told that he would find extra clothing in a dresser drawer in the outer room.

By the time the doctor finished Arte had changed, filled a bowl with water and soap and begun the process of washing the soot and smoke from his skin. Each swipe of the cloth revealed minor burns or bruises that he didn't remember earning, but the cool water was nothing short of heaven.

"The last time you were in this town you were known as Charlie Gordon..." Doctor Weeks said, standing in the doorway with a pipe in his hand, unlit. "Is that still your name?"

Arte sighed softly then introduced himself. "I work for the United States government..." He tried to explain but the Doctor pursed his lips, closed his eyes and shook his head, putting up the hand with the pipe.

"The less you tell me son, the better. Besides, it's time that I told you a few things. Sit down so that I can look at that gash."

The wound that the nail had opened on his shoulder had continued to bleed enough that Arte had decided against bloodying one of the doctor's shirts. Bare chested, Arte sat on the stool that the doctor had pointed toward and waited as the older man collected his tools.

The doctor began to ply his trade, his hands busy, the pipe clenched in his teeth. As he worked he spoke. "Thirty years ago, when that damned showboat come through town, there wasn't a soul in town that didn't get all higglety-pigglety over the whole thing. I knew there'd be trouble. Show folks are always trouble. But I wasn't fool enough to open my mouth about it. So I just sat back and waited for it all to be over and ended. Hold that there, son."

Arte reached up and pressed down on the snowy white bandage the doctor had pressed against the cleaned wound, listening to him rattle in a drug cabinet. A moment later the bandage was tugged gently from his grasp and a needle was jabbed, expertly, but in no way gently, deep into the muscle. Arte stiffened and cast a look over his shoulder, but said nothing.

"When the showboat caught fire, and the gun shots and the wailing and gnashing of teeth all come together, I was surprised to Jupiter and gone to find a pregnant woman was bein' brought to my doorstep. Halfway through the start of her contractions I had another patient show up, a young man with a bullet twisted in his guts and cuts on his arm like he'd been in a duel. A mighty, unfair duel I 'spect. But I did what I could for both my patients. That baby still hadn't made her appearance when a third man was ushered over my threshold. This one had burns all over, little burns, but deep. The kind that would scar, and keep on scarring, for the rest of that man's life.

The burns were all over, and there were older scars on the man's body too. Other duels, I figured. The meanest scar of all though...was also the oldest. That scar..." The doc paused, holding the end of the bandage that he'd been winding around Arte's arm with a finger as he reached for a pin to secure it. "...was old enough to have been made when this man was a yonker. The injury that caused it would have prevented him from uh...siring...if you understand, any children at all. So it came as one hellacious surprise to me when the burned man awoke and claimed to be the husband of the woman attemptin' to give birth. I knew...thus...that something pe-culiar was goin' on, and after a very weak, and very small baby was born I decided to get to the bottom of the trouble."

The doctor helped Arte pull on the shirt, looking over the myriad burns as he did and applying a healing ointment to those that needed it. "I was younger then...nosey. Didn't know yet about keeping my mind out of the personal lives of patients I was never gonna see again. But I sat down with this young mother while she was trying to get her new yonker to feed, and I asked her if that man with the burns was her husband. And she said, "Yes.""

The doctor moved around the room, putting various supplies away before he pulled one all important medicinal product from the drawer of his desk. He produced two glasses and carefully measured medicinal for himself and his patient, before handing Arte a shot of the amber liquid. But as the doctor settled into a chair opposite Gordon he did not drink. Arte too abstained, listening.

"Then I asked the young lady if she knew that her husband was impotent, and after some tears and denials, the young lady admitted that yes, she'd known for some time that her husband wasn't capable of having children. Something to do with his childhood, she said, that he'd never revealed to her. But when they first married and they'd tried for a year without success, she had started to suspect. That first year of marriage, she told me, was the worst of her life. When her husband couldn't perform, he blamed her. When his performances produced no dividends, he blamed her. And the blame turned to beatings. One night...she decided the only way to end the beatings was to find some way to get herself with child."

Arte's mouth opened but he couldn't say anything. His throat was closing up and his eyes were tearing again but it had nothing to do with kerosene or smoke. Doctor Weeks' had stopped to consider the glass of whiskey still in his hand. He licked his lips, but denied himself the pleasure of the liquid, setting the glass on the surface of the desk. "Young Mrs. Unger admitted to me through tears that her first child Hannah was conceived following a brief dalliance with a traveling salesman and itinerant actor. She'd used her skills to woo the man, had willingly taken him to her bed, then did everything in her power to avoid him once she realized that his seed had taken hold. When she gave birth she did all that she could to convince her husband that the child was his. For the first year at least, Anna said that her husband believed her."

"And...then she grew..." Arte whispered and the doctor nodded.

"As children do, she grew and developed, and looked for all the world like her mother, but not very much like her father. Anna said that Joseph started to suspect, but didn't become violent until after a year and a half passed with no further children."

"And the beatings started again..." Arte forced out, wishing he had known then...thirty years ago. Wishing that Anna had confided in him sooner. "And she went and...and..."

Dr. Week's leaned forward in the chair, "Now that topic came up next of course. After all a brown-eyed child couldn't have come from two blue-eyed people. Anna told me that the beatings drove her to start looking for another surrogate. About that time she and Joseph Unger were starting a theatre company, looking for actors and crew in Pittsburgh. She noticed a handsome young man, younger than her, but with maturity beyond her years. With brown curling hair, and playful brown eyes. Anna told me she instantly knew the man to be trouble. He was talented, Anna said, with the energy of a thousand suns. She very much wanted that young man to be the father of her second child."

Arte couldn't breathe anymore. His eye sight had narrowed to a pinpoint.

"Anna said that she did everything she could to have her husband hire that young man, but she didn't have to make the effort. Joseph immediately liked him."

The glass in his hand was shaking, the liquid spilling over his fingers, dripping to the floor. The dry wood hungrily drinking it up.

"Anna said that she wooed the young man, enduring every beating, every harsh word, every insult to her womanhood, and doing all that she could to protect her first-born from her husband, in hopes that the newcomer would overcome his hesitance and bed her. In the process, Anna said, she found herself falling in love. When the young man finally came to her bed she felt a joy she'd never before experienced with a man. And she knew, without a doubt, that she had conceived."

"Oh God..."

"The baby she gave birth to, the morning after the showboat fire, was weak and pale, and almost seven weeks early. Infants so unprepared for the outside world do not normally survive, Mr. Gordon. But Louise did."

Whatever else Doctor Weeks had to say Arte couldn't hear. He had slipped from the stool and was sitting on the floor, tears silently falling, mourning and, deeper down, celebrating. The night he had nearly lost his life he had gained a life.

The life of his daughter.


	9. Chapter 9

Black Jack had served James West well over the years, always responding to each command, sometimes with more spirit than was necessary, but Black Jack was never one to give up the chase. Following the trail of Unger's three goons had begun as not much of a challenge, then snowballed into a game of cat and mouse as the three men on horseback split up.

There was no way of knowing which horse carried the Mick, and which the other two. West's goal was to follow the clear leader. The Irishman would be the one who knew where Hannah and Louise were. Jim studied the mix of prints in the road until he could discern the hooves of the Irishman's horse over those of the others. The Mick had been the first to branch off.

Jim took the road less traveled and wound his way into the Mississippi countryside.

Arte's departure from The Wanderer earlier that day had seemed a gentle start to a benign day until Jim returned to the varnish car to find it tossed, and a note pinned to the wall with a letter opener. In a nearly indecipherable scrawl he had been warned to show up unarmed in the town of Marcum with Joseph Unger's back pay, or Louise and Hannah would be killed.

Jim had searched the whole of the train first before assuming that the warning spoke the truth. The feeling that the situation was spinning tornadically out of control made the trip to Marcum seem shorter than he expected. He arrived to find a barn in flames and his partner covered in soot and coughing it out of his lungs, and the aging library security man dying from a gunshot wound, claiming that Joseph Unger's impotence was the culprit behind the whole thing.

Then Arte mentioned treason.

Suddenly the unexpected desire for the back pay made sense, but nothing else did. None the less he had left Arte in the capable hands of Marcum's town surgeon and raced off after Unger's men.

Now, following only the Mick, Jim began to get the feeling that he was being followed himself. The road he traveled was narrow, fenced in by the last of the late fall foliage and thickets of briars. There weren't many places to force his horse off the road. There was however a stout tree branch that he found he could climb onto from the saddle. He was several branches higher, his horse roaming freely around the base of the tree when he spotted one of the two new henchman the Mick had hired.

Confusion marring his face, the goon eyed the empty horse, then the sides of the road, coming to the same conclusion Jim had. Just as the goon reached for his gun, his eyes lifting toward the barren branches of the tree, Jim cocked back the hammer on his own pistol and said, "I wouldn't."

The goon considered for a long moment then eased his hand away, putting both palms up.

"What's your name, son?" Jim asked, noticing for the first time how young this one was.

"Angus." The boy answered, his eyes bouncing from the tree, to the riderless horse, to the side of the road and back again.

"Why were you following me, Angus?"

With a casual confidence that Jim didn't much like, Angus shrugged his shoulders, lowering his hands a little. "It's a free country. I was just passing along. Wasn't following you in particular."

"In that case you can consider me a robber, and this a hi-jacking. Take off your gun belt and throw it toward the black."

Angus gave him a sneer, but moved his hands to comply, once more hesitating as his hand passed by the gun butt. By the time the gun and belt hit the ground Angus was still entirely too confident. Jim cocked his head, peering through the reddened leaves that separated them, then waved the gun barrel.

"And the shoulder gun."

Angus paled a little, but again did as he was asked, emptying the holster.

That had taken some of the bluster out of him. Angus was no longer cocky, but still plenty mad. Jim wasn't confident enough to try jumping down from his perch with the boy still sitting his horse.

"Dismount, on the right side."

Having to think to through the awkward move, Angus was distracted as he stepped down from his horse. By the time he straightened, Jim was on the road with him, Angus' guns in one hand.

Jim pointed his own weapon toward the road down which they both had come and said, "Walk."

"Yer leavin' me afoot?" The boy demanded, outraged.

"Once you get back to Marcum and turn yourself in to the Sheriff, you'll get your horse back. And your guns, if the Sheriff's of a mind."

"This is rob-"

"Yes...it is, isn't it? Move." Jim said with a barely contained smirk. He waited until the boy had turned and started walking before he approached the young man's horse, talking softly to the animal. Once Angus had walked around the bend out of sight, Jim quickly collected the horse, and the weapons and mounted Black Jack.

He put as much distance between himself and the boy as possible, pulling the extra horse along with him.

The guns he eventually tossed into the thicket alongside the road, keeping the bullets. The horse he released near a small farmhouse, its yard for the moment deserted.

There were petticoats drying on a line, and the smell of food baking. The toys of small children collected on the well-worn porch. Hardly the place where West expected to find an outlaw and two hostages.

He rode for miles, encountering few other homesteads. The thickets, he discovered, had been planted intentionally to protect fields that usually lay a few meters beyond the natural barriers. Miles and miles of fields that were likely owned and farmed by sharecroppers. Some of them might have been freedmen, some of them white. These were hardly plantations, however. This was the poor part of the south, made all the poorer by the Northern backlash that followed the War Between the States.

Any abandoned shacks, Jim approached carefully and searched thoroughly. The farther away from Marcum he went the less confident he felt about the path he had chosen.

He discovered that he had chosen the correct trail in the same moment that he realized he had become too complacent about his search. Unfortunately Black Jack was the first to suffer the consequences. The bullet smacked into flesh before Jim heard the shot and his horse bucked, and skittered, letting out an outraged protest to the assault. Jim was crushed against the trunk of a tree then dumped into the thicket before Black Jack took off.

Dazed, caught in what felt like a hundred tiny thorns, Jim's struggles only earned him more pin pricks of pain and made him all the more stuck. He ripped an arm free only to have to thrust it back into the mess of briars to get as his gun. Above the sound of his own struggles he could hear someone approaching and finally gave up on the sidearm, popping the release on the derringer he kept hidden up his sleeve. At least minimally armed Jim tried to relax, peering through the growing gloom of twilight at the man approaching.

"Ye're not as good when you don't have an audience." The Mick said, opening the breach of the rifle he had used to shoot Black Jack and pushing another shell into the chamber. "Though I will give you that fine bit of maneuvering when you got the drop on Angus. He's a bright boy, but...young. Good of you to let him out of it with only a wounded pride. Foolish, but good of you."

The Mick was talking to him, but Jim realized he hadn't yet been seen. He was far enough into the briars, and the light dim enough, that he was blending into the mess. The Mick was nothing more than a dark shadow beyond the curling vines, but he was backlit by the setting sun. A far easier target.

The only problem was that Jim couldn't move without making noise, and noise would draw the Mick's attention and aim.

There was a chuckle from the road, as if the Irishman had been reading his thoughts. "You're right. I haven't found you yet, but as stuck as I'll bet you are, all I need do is play a little roulette with this thicket, and I'll find the mark eventually."

"Did you bring me to Marcum to kill me?" Jim asked, hating to admit, even to himself, that the Mick was right. The silence game wouldn't have lasted long, and in the mean time Jim had questions and the Mick seemed to like to talk.

"No." The man said, and Jim watched as the shadow changed, the gun now resting against the Irishman's shoulder with the barrel pointing toward the sky. "Captain Unger decided that he wanted his due after all, and as I was certain that your actor friend didn't have it with him, and since we couldn'a find it in that fancy car of yours...well of course you had to be the one to bring it."

"Unger's daughters...where are they?"

"Now that, dependin' on who you ask, is a most peculiar question. But...the day has been a long one so I'll give you the answer ye're wantin'. The girls are hidden, and for the moment whole."

The longer he lay against the briars the deeper they dug into his skin. Each move would produce pain but Jim found that he could free his arm with very little noise, one thorn at a time using his fingertips. His left arm had been relatively mobile to begin with and he was soon working on freeing the right.

"What does Unger expect to gain anyway?"

The Mick laughed, then brought the gun to bear and fired into the thicket, a foot beyond where Jim lay and to the right. Far too close. In the echoing silence that followed Jim could hear the click of the breach, the scrape of a new round sliding home. The cock of the hammer.

"Suffice to say, that Unger wishes to go about his business in peace, without the meddling of government men. It was Yankee meddlers that started the war. Ye didn't learn then, and ye still haven't learned."

"You might say that our _winning_ the war disrupted the lesson." Jim snapped.

The Mick's response was another shot. This one _was _too close. It burned through the gap between Jim's right arm and his side, taking a piece of hide with it. Jim took a breath and swallowed the cry of surprise, riding through the pain and forcing his fingers back into motion.

The Mick calmly reloaded the weapon, apparently none the wiser that he had essentially hit his target.

Jim's arm was almost free. As he worked the last few thorns out of his jacket, he realized that the Mick had gone completely still, his head cocked.

"Did I kill ya then, Yank?"

The last two thorns finally popped free and Jim said, "Nope." before he cocked the derringer and fired at the shadow before him, aiming low. He fired both barrels as quickly as possible, already digging for his sidearm before he heard the Mick groan and topple to the ground.

There was no way of getting out of the thicket quickly. Jim shrugged off his jacket first before he sat up. The graze on his side was long, soaking his white shirt through with blood. As his weight shifted Jim could feel the thorns in his pants digging into his legs and backside, but he ignored it all, going for the knife he kept over his spine, grateful that he kept at least one edge as sharp as possible.

He began sawing his way through the vines clinging to him, using his folded jacket to tamp down the bushes preventing his access to the road. By the time he tumbled free he looked very much like a living pin cushion, some of the vines still clinging to him. His hat, was wedged into the vines, lost to nature so far as he was concerned.

The Mick lay on the road, still alive, his hands clutching at his left knee. The rifle was still beside him but Jim kicked it away before the Mick could wield it then bent to search the man for any other weapons. While he had the opportunity Jim pulled a kerchief from his pocket and stuffed it inside his shirt over the wound, then tied a bandanna sharply around the Mick's knee.

The resulting moan brought the Irishman out of semi-consciousness and Jim yanked him to a sitting position by his lapels.

"Where are they?" He asked, then reached down and dug his thumb into the man's wounded leg until he choked on the pain and put a hand up in protest.

"I'll tell ye, I'll tell ye."

"No...you'll show me. Get up."

* * *

The doctor had disappeared. Off seeing to Sheriff Stone, or perhaps he had gone to bed. Arte didn't know where, but the pounding on the door of the doctor's office interrupted his thoughts and he opened it to have a small child thrust into his arms. Bewildered he tried to make sense of the wailing of the child's mother, but the consonants and vowels ran together into a mush that he couldn't comprehend.

When Weeks appeared he moved quickly, taking the child from Arte's arms and speaking in the same gibberish to the mother. A mix of Spanish and English, Gordon finally realized. The child was sick and his fever had spiked in the afternoon hours. The mother, desperate, had forced her husband to row her and the boy upriver to Marcum, the closest town with a doctor.

"Mr. Gordon, heat some water for me, and a basin of cold water please." Weeks ordered then told the woman in her native language that she had to remove as much clothing from her child as possible.

"You speak Spanish.." Arte said as the doctor pulled some powders contained in glass jars from the cabinet near the stove. Arte lifted one of the cooking panels so that he could drop wood onto the fire, then replaced it setting the pot of water on to heat.

"It is Latin based, and Latin is the language of physicians everywhere. There are many Mexican immigrants in the town south of Marcum."

With his supplies gathered the doctor tried to pull the distraught mother's hands away from her child but she refused to let go. Arte stepped in, speaking softly as he pried her hands away, "Deje que el médico haga su trabajo."

"Usted habla español también." Weeks responded surprised, before he turned to the boy, coaxing a mix of powders and honey past his lips.

"It makes my job a little easier too." Arte said. As the hot water came to a boil the doctor talked Gordon through the process of mixing a special herbal tea that was then spoon fed to the young boy. Arte made a cup for the fretting mother as well, then realized that there was a third party still missing from the drama.

He left the doctor's office, walking through the darkness that had to have fallen no more than an hour ago. The streets were empty, lights burning in most of the buildings on main street and some of the houses beyond it. The church was once more occupied by the devout. Arte walked down to the docks wishing he had thought to bring a lantern with him and called for the husband and father of the two patients now inhabiting the doctor's front room. He hadn't caught a surname from the mother, but he knew the boy's name was Alejandro.

As his feet hit the boards he searched the platforms closer to the surface of the water and saw no vessel that would match the description the lady had given. Would the father have brought his sick child, only to abandon him and his mother in Marcum? Were all fathers useless and given to abandoning their offspring at the first opportunity?

When he returned the doctor looked up from where he sat by the child on the bed. "Did you find him?"

Arte shook his head, giving the woman a sympathetic look that she did not see, her eyes fixed on the boy.

"I'm not surprised really. Most of them are farmers." The doctor responded, as if that were explanation enough, and rose into a half-crouch collecting the basin of cold water from the stool he had pulled close to the bed, wiping the boy down head to toe. The child responded immediately to the cooling relief, and Arte heard the mother gasp hopefully, her hands clasping in front of her in prayer.

"Can I get anything else?" Arte asked, feeling somewhat useless.

"No...no. The powders should work their magic from within, and the cold compresses should help from without. The boy looks healthy enough otherwise. Who knows what his home conditions are like, though his clothes are clean."

After a moment the doctor looked up, eyeing Artemus. "How are you feeling?"

Arte leaned back against the counter crossing his arms. He started to smirk, then felt the expression fall from his face, the turmoil of mixed emotions bubbling just below the surface, denying him the usual flippant attitude. The longer he'd thought about it the more he had come up with one question that irked him more than the others.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

Monitoring the boy's temperature with one hand on his forehead, the doctor reached for the cold compress again. "Before?"

"Thirty years ago, when the Louise was born. When Anna revealed to you that I was the father. Why didn't you tell me then?"

Cooling the boy's face and neck the doctor pursed his lips as he read the thermometer then set it to the side. "Tell me, Mr. Gordon, what good would it have done, had I dropped the responsibility of a newborn baby on your shoulders. Keeping in mind that you were first fully conscious almost four days after the incident, and by that time Anna, Mr. Unger and their children were long gone."

Arte found he didn't have a response. And, as he returned the doctor's unwavering gaze he understood that the doctor had asked himself that very question, likely more than once then, and in the years that followed.

"And Hudson?" Arte asked, watching as the doctor took another temperature reading before he waved the mother to come closer. In quite tones he reassured her in her native tongue, then showed her the technique he had been using to cool off the boy's raging temperature. Relieved to be given a task the woman nodded anxiously to each instruction, before she sat beside the boy taking over the doctor's work.

"Hudson?" Weeks said, as he rose, then nodded with realization. "You refer to the man we knew as Hetsy."

This was the second person to refer to Hudson by another name, a name that Arte knew was familiar but he couldn't place it.

"When Hetsy first set foot in Marcum he was a traveling salesman. Set up his cart on the edge of town but he wasn't terribly good at selling anything. He made money, somehow. I know because he spent it in town. He came to Marcum the same day that the showboat came. The first time. Right about the time that you were settling in, I think too.

I didn't like Hetsy. He was selling castor oil and opium and calling it a miracle cure, but in my mind he was as harmless as every other snake oil man to come through. I did what I could to discourage the more treacherous of his products, and he put up with me. Paid special attention to the showboat, but then who didn't in those days. When the showboat moved on, and the excitement died down, we found that Hetsy had moved on too. I wasn't surprised. Many of the folks had spent what little they had on tickets to see the show. They had little frivolous money left to spend on knickknacks and so-called miracle cures."

The doctor paused, his hands on his hips, throwing his mind back. "Yes...Hetsy moved on and life continued again until the months passed and the showboat returned. And there like clockwork was Hetsy again, with his cart. Selling new fancy voodoo cures that he'd obtained in New Orleans, beads, and baubles he'd collected in his travels.

He was the one who brought you to my door that night."

Arte straightened, his back stiffening, his eyes widening with the sudden shock of adrenaline. The doctor nodded. "Yes. He'd been one of the first to respond to the flaming show boat and had rescued Anna and her eldest child, and he claimed to have fished you out of the drink. Had a bit of an altercation with Anna and Joseph too, once she was up and walking around. The man seemed earnest, and intent, but there was a little bit of the fanatic about him. As though he were a true psychotic with a well-formed mask of sanity in place."

Arte thought about Hudson's voice just before he pulled the trigger, forcing buckshot through a human being at point-blank range, nearly cutting the Red Head in half. It had been far from the sane thing to do in the situation.

"That argument was the talk of the town for about a day, too. The old codgers who liked to gather on the boarding house porch discussed how Anna seemed to know Hetsy, but clearly Joseph Unger didn't. Some said the argument was about the boat, and they thought Hetsy might have been the owner. Some said it was to do with a love triangle. Of course no one could put Anna to blame, but they suspected either Unger or Hetsy of some sort of wrong. There were just as many wild stories the following night, the night that Anna, and her children disappeared with Joseph Unger."

"The night they took the tug.."

"Yes." Doctor Weeks nodded before he moved back to the bed containing the sick child, once more applying the thermometer, waiting as the mercury rose, then giving the young mother encouragement and further instruction. "The old man who used to be the dock master was especially keen on what he claimed to have seen that night. He swore up one side and down that he saw Joseph Unger holding a small pistol against his eldest daughter's side, forcing his wife to board the tugboat."

When Arte started to interrupt, Weeks put up a hand. "The old man was known to have seen many things, and it was dark when the family left. Also, no one else could ever corroborate. But...as hallucinations go, this one was a little more detailed than what Will usually came up with. Anyway, about a week later rumors were starting to spread that a negro family, freedmen living on a small patch of farmland, had witnessed a tugboat being set ablaze and scuttled in the middle of the river. It was rumor...of course, but when neither Anna, nor Joseph Unger were heard from again. ...then Hetsy returned to town. The way he looked he might have been in a scuffle. He bought a ticket for a boat going south with that inexhaustible cashflow of his and..." The doctor shrugged.

"You let the man die." Arte said, vaguely accusatory. "You alleged that he was a rapist and a philanderer."

Weeks pondered Arte the way a man might consider a tricky chess move, silent for a minute before he took a deep breath. "Mr. Gordon, Hetsy was going to die whether I hovered over him with Hippocratic concern, or not. Prolonging his life would have meant prolonging his pain. And according to Miss Marlene Riley he was a rapist. He did not, apparently, return to Marcum only to buy a ticket and leave. He attacked Miss Riley as she was leaving the school-house, dragged her into the woods and molested her. She wasn't found until after dark, and even then she was incapable of speech until a day later. When she would finally admit that she had been molested she identified Hetsy as her attacker. She described him in detail, but the most damning evidence came from his own mouth. Through out the attack Hesty called Miss Riley 'Anna'."

"What...what became of Miss Riley?"

"She bore a child as a result. Gave that child to an older couple in the town desperate for children and...drowned herself, in the river." The doctor's eyes and voice had gone cold, his tone stoney, demanding that Arte make an effort to justify Hetsy's actions, or make a claim that it was a case of mistaken identity. Yet Arte could not.

He suspected that were he to dig into Hudson's past he would find more and more inconsistencies. He knew nothing about the man and yet he had been willing to believe he was an ally, and an advocate. There was only one discrepancy.

"Hudson...Hetsy, looked after Hannah and Louise from a distance, for most of their lives. He never...hurt them." Arte shook his head, unwilling to voice the idea, finding he didn't have to.

"You would have done the same, had you known."

"What?"

The doctor had leaned once more over the boy, who was sleeping soundly, his temperature markedly lower. He gave the mother reassurances and suggested that she try to rest. "If you had known that you were Louise's father thirty years ago you would have been just as protective."

His mind wasn't making the connection, and his face must have clearly reflected it. Weeks sighed. "Mr. Gordon, Harold Hetsy was most likely the father of Anna's first child."

* * *

Black Jack returned readily when James whistled for him. His flank was streaked with blood and he was limping heavily, the bullet likely buried in the muscle. He couldn't be ridden and Jim took the saddle off, leaving the blanket on. The Mick's horse was down the road and around a corner, hobbled in the thicket. Jim took the animal's saddle off as well before he brought the horse back to the wounded Irishman.

"Ye expect me to ride without a saddle?"

"Your less likely to run this way, and you shot my horse." Jim said, then hoisted the man up, making a stirrup out of his joined hands. He ignored the Mick's pained groans, more concerned about the pain Black Jack was suffering. The burn at West's side was irritating but not life threatening...to West anyway. Every time it pulled, or the myriad of thorn pricks on his skin started to itch, Jim was more and more ready to kill the Irishman.

Thankfully the road came to a sudden end less than a mile and a half later. It gave a severe bend, turning behind a barn then dissipating into the overgrown grass of someone's front yard. The farm-house had two candles burning, and a fire was tingeing the air with wood smoke.

"Who's in there with them?" Jim asked, and when he didn't get a response he slapped the injured man's knee.

The Mick paled, curling toward the horse's neck before he moaned, "Unger...he insisted on comin' down with us."

"What is this place?"

"Unger owns it. He and his wife lived here for two years."

"Alright, get down." Jim ordered, pulling his sidearm. He waited until the Irishman's feet touched the ground before he grabbed the wounded man's shoulder and shoved him forward.

To his shock he was on the ground a second later, the breath jolted from his body. He was registering the move the Mick had pulled, an over the shoulder toss that should have been impossible with the wound to the man's knee, when the Mick scooped up the rifle and checked the chamber. Disappointed to find the gun empty the man approached none the less, raising the rifle by the barrel prepared to drive the stock into James' skull.

West still had his hand gun, pulled and pointed dead center between the Mick's eyes, but he wasn't willing to shoot. He scrambled to his feet and waited, a little breathless, shocked at the sudden, almost demonic passion that had overcome the man. Gradually common sense overruled the frenzied violence and the Mick let the gun sink back to the ground.

Jim gritted his teeth, pressed a palm against his throbbing side and ordered, "Move."

Before they'd even crossed the yard the door opened, the silhouette of a woman outlined by the faint flicker of the fire in the main room.

"Hannah?"

"Yes. Mr. West, but how did you know to come-"

"Are you and Louise alright?"

The figure paused before Hannah's bewildered voice responded, "Of course. I heard voices and the horses...my Heavens, you've been injured! And Mr. Getzman!"

The Irishman cast him a sidelong glance that made Jim's gut twist, before Getzman waved the girl off. "S'alright, darlin'. I'll be fine. Took a bit of a tumble."

"It's not fine at all. We haven't a doctor, but we can still do something about all that blood. Come in then." Hannah said, her voice taking on a hint of maternal authority that she'd never truly had the opportunity to exhibit.

Jim kept Getzman from moving any further by lightly pressing the muzzle of the gun into his back, then called, "Hannah, come out please."

The woman tilted her head, then stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind her. "Mr. West, this night air is hardly conducive to-"

"Is Joseph Unger inside?" Jim asked, dropping his voice.

"Yes, sleeping last I knew."

"Get your sister, and we'll leave. Are there horses?"

"Leave! I hardly intend to leave, this is my home now, Mr. West. Father has explained a great deal, and he's gifted this property to Louise and I."


	10. Chapter 10

The absolute last thing that James West intended to do was step into Unger's house. He saw it as a minefield, a dangerous trap that he wasn't going to escape if he let himself get sucked into it. At the same time it seemed that Joseph Unger had successfully been weaving his lies. There was the sickly sweet smell in the air, the smell of a child's trust rotting.

As much as Jim cared about Hannah and Louise, and their happiness, he cared more about their search for truth. Both had openly accepted at one time that their past was all lies. West wasn't going to let them get dragged back into it. "Joseph Unger...isn't your father, Hannah." Jim called, causing the figure that had begun to step down from the front steps to freeze. He felt his prisoner move a second later, and tried to grab for the man, but his side ripped open, crippling him with pain before a fist connected with his jaw.

He saw stars and blindly punched out at air, knowing the Irishman had a hole in his knee and couldn't get far. A moment later hands were trying to yank the gun from his fist and he struck skin and bone this time. Once his knuckles found flesh, he pulled his fist back and delivered it several more times before there was splash of blood on his cheeks and Getzman grunted, falling away. As Jim straightened he saw that the Irishman was still on his feet, but now bleeding from the mouth.

Jim could feel his jaw swelling rapidly and anger swelling up with it. He'd been attacked, shot and sucker punched by this man too many times. West wasn't going to put up with it anymore. Eyeing Hannah from his peripheral vision Jim tossed the gun in her direction. The Irishman watched it arch then looked back to West with a satisfied grin on his bloodied face, moving into a fighter's crouch.

Jim didn't waste much time, stepping into the box and managing a tight uppercut before the Irishman grazed him with a fist. The Mick's head flew back, blood curving into the air with it, but he kept his feet and swung a left at Jim's face. Jim caught the arm, pivoted and pulled the man over his head, dumping him with little preparation into the cold, wet grass. Getzman recovered faster than Jim would have liked, rolling with his wounded knee outstretched, and quickly gaining his feet.

West scanned his enemy for weaknesses, the maniacal grin on the man's face implying that their weren't any. The next exchange of punches ended with neither man gaining any ground, and both breathing harder. The Irishman had been a street fighter, probably from birth, and had added a number of disciplines onto that basic knowledge. There were no rules, Jim discovered, when a moment later the Mick threw another left. Jim went to cover up before he realized it was a feint. Just as he was dropping his arms the Mick sank hard knuckles into the groove cut into West's side, pounding the injury once, twice before Jim kicked out a foot at the Irishman's knee and they both backed away.

West's side was stitching now, robbing him of breath and energy, and he could feel fresh blood rolling toward the waistband of his pants. The Irishman had gone down on his bad knee and was struggling to rise again. Jim met the man's eye and saw nothing. Only black coal buried in brown stone. West wondered if Unger truly understood the kind of man he had chosen to ally with.

There was a gunshot, a flash of powder igniting in the air and Jim caught a glimpse of Hannah wielding his hand gun, before the darkness returned. At first Jim thought that Hannah was aiming the gun at him, but as he straightened he realized that Getzman was her target and he moved, jerking the man to his feet again.

"You should have left him on his knees, Mr. West." Hannah spoke, her voice markedly quieter than it had been before. She started to move closer, the gun still firmly pointed at the Irishman. "Joseph Unger will have awakened, and it won't be long before he and his other men come to investigate. If this was meant to be a rescue, we should leave quickly."

Baffled, Jim said, "I don't...I don't understand..."

"Louise and I did our best to convince Mr. Unger that he had won us over. It was all we could do to survive. I thought that maintaining the story would give you an advantage over Mr. Getzman."

"Where is your sister?"

"She escaped, an hour ago. Unger and his men have been unconscious, knocked out by some sleeping powder we fixed into the food, but that isn't likely to last forever. Please, if we are to make our get-away..."

"Can you ride bareback?" Jim asked, nodding toward the Irishman's saddle-less horse.

Hannah gave the animal a reluctant glance then answered to the affirmative with a hesitant but resigned sigh and Jim gingerly took his gun from her hands.

Yanking on the Irishman, Jim gritted his teeth, "Planning to move?"

The man weakly shook his head. West didn't trust him at all but didn't have a choice for the moment. He moved with Hannah, cupping his hands and quickly hoisting her onto the horse. "Can you find your way back to Marcum?" Jim asked, his gun pointed once more at Getzman.

"Yes, Louise and I agreed to meet-"

"Don't tell me, just get there. Find Arte, get him up to date."

"Mr. West, I can hardly leave you here. You're bleeding."

"I'll be fine." Jim said, certain he sounded reassuring, but not feeling that way.

Hannah had misgivings but turned the horse and rode from the yard before she voiced them. The night was cold and forbidding and the further she got from the small farm at the end of the road, the sicker she felt about leaving West there. Tempting the fates, Hannah pushed the horse just a little faster and held on tight.

* * *

Arte hadn't expected the second knock at the door but when it came he responded better than he had with the last. Giving one glance to the boy and mother now asleep in the bed, Arte stood and greeted what he assumed to be a new patient.

Instead he found a breathless, tattered, and exhausted Louise who folded into him without warning. Behind her stood a tall negro man, eyeing Louise with concern and Arte with caution. All Arte could feel was a temporary wave of relief.

"Come in..." He urged, moving out of the door and guiding Louise to the chair he had been sitting in moments ago. He knelt in front of her looking her over, finding a few bruises on her arms, and scrapes on her face and hands. She was pale and chilled but otherwise seemed unharmed. "Louise, what happened?" Arte coached softly. "Where is your sister?" He asked, sparing a few glances to the black man who seemed relatively at ease in the doctor's office.

"Father..." Louise said, her voice soft as a mouse.

For a moment Arte froze, and felt his heart almost grind to stand still. How could she have known? Who could have told her? Jim didn't even know...how could...then he realized who 'father' was and felt the bile begin to rise. "Unger...he's the one that took you?"

Louise nodded, took a deep breath, then forced herself to sit up straighter on the chair. "Hannah and I took a walk in that town. We'd been cooped up on the train for so long. Mr. West agreed to come with us but we were separated. And then he was there, Unger and two men we'd never seen before. He tried to convince Hannah and I that he had repented, changed his ways. That he intended to see us through the rest of our lives...provide for us.

We convinced him to take us to the train, to collect our things, in hopes that Mr. West would be there but he wasn't. Unger and his men took us from the train, brought us to a house. I know it may seem foolish but we were frightened..."

Arte shook his head but didn't interrupt her. As Louise took a deep breath to continue, a cup of steaming liquid appeared in front of her and Arte glanced with surprise at the silent negro man who had had the forethought to put it together.

"We devised a plan, Mr. Gordon, to go along with him until we could find escape. We managed to drug him and his men but..." Louise swallowed hard, setting her jaw before she admitted, "Hannah made me leave her behind. I was to wait at Mr. Marshall's house there, but..." Louise shook her head. "I couldn't. Oh I couldn't. And Mr. Marshall said that someone had left a horse in their yard earlier and he was good enough to saddle it for me. We rode here as fast as we could. We have to return...please, Mr. Gordon. She's all I have left. Once they find that I'm gone..."

Arte did what he could to console her, looking back to the man who had to have been Marshall. "Can you take me there?" Arte asked quietly.

Even as the man was nodding Louise was pulling away from him. "No I can't. I can't stay here. I have to go back with you. I won't slow you down, I promise. I must go."

"You're exhausted, Louise. You are chilled to the bone and going with me will only put you and your sister in further danger, please..."

Louise was getting to her feet despite his warnings, her voice growing stronger as she continued to protest.

"There isn't time for this argument, Louise. It would be foolhardy to take you with me." Arte said, his voice a little firmer. He glanced to the mother in the bed across the room, awake now and watching the conversation.

A conversation that they couldn't afford to have in that room any longer. Arte moved to his saddle bags collecting them before he headed out the door. Marshall had preceded him, loosing the reins of the horses and waiting patiently with them.

"I won't be left behind. She's my sister, Mr. Gordon!" Even as she protested Louise was glancing up and down the dark street.

Gordon stepped onto the horse that she had taken into town, and Marshall mounted his own. They were turning away from the doctor's office and taking off at a gallop without another word. Louise was not one to be defeated however and she soon found the small stable, the only stable still standing in the town, with a familiar brown horse.

* * *

Ten minutes after Gordon and Marshall passed the freedman's house they encountered Hannah on the road. Riding a saddle-less horse she seemed just as fatigued and yet determined as her sister. The argument on the road escalated until Arte simply took off, Marshall pursuing, and pointing over his shoulder that Hannah should continue on until she arrived at the farmhouse.

Hannah reluctantly did as she was told until she met Louise, in hot pursuit of Arte and Ezekiel. Together the women decided they could still be of help, but not necessarily dressed and unarmed as they were. They journeyed to the Marshall farm, greeting the lady of the house Helena Marshall excitedly before they began to hatch a plan.

* * *

It took the Irishman no more than a minute or so to recover. The still, quiet that Jim had enjoyed as he watched Hannah make her get away was broken by the Mick shouting at the house, hoping to rouse his fellows. Jim was fairly confident that if Hannah's warning shot hadn't wakened them, Getzman's shouting wasn't likely to. Still he was uncomfortable with the man's caterwauling and he delivered a right hook to the man's jaw to shut him up. Getzman went to his good knee this time, and stayed there, dizzily shaking his head.

Jim shook out knuckles that were beginning to swell and jerked the Mick to his feet again, half-dragging him back to the cover of the barn near the road. Inside he struck a match, located an old lantern, and lit it, scanning the rundown building for some rope. What he found he used to tie the Irishman, then looked over the man's wounded knee.

The wrestling and fighting had kept the bullet wound from clotting, but the blood loss didn't appear to be life threatening yet. The groove cutting along Jim's side just under his rib cage was painful, but no longer bleeding.

The barn had been emptied of most of its useful tools, housing the few horses that Unger and his men had brought with them, and a large, enclosed carriage. Other than rotting hay and a rusted pitch fork there was nothing in the barn that Jim could use. Even if he'd had a cannon he didn't know what he would have done with it. There was plenty of rope however, and West was entertaining the idea of sneaking into the house and hog tying every one of Unger's men while they slept, when the Irishman began to thrash around.

When Jim glanced over, instead of a man struggling to free himself from his bonds, he caught the whites of the Mick's eyes and a terrified look directed at a pile of field stones stacked in a corner. A second later a long slender shadow flickered through the hay and West grabbed the Mick by the cloth between his shoulder blades, dragging him away from the pile and up a short set of stairs leading to a raised platform that served as a miniature hay loft.

The effort was exhausting and Jim weaved on his feet, before he sat down hard on the platform, breathing heavily. Getzman was just as breathless beside him, laying awkwardly.

"You'd shoot a man...and do ye're best to kill him with yer fists...but you won't let 'im get bit by a snake?" Getzman asked, baffled.

Jim felt sick to his stomach, the blood loss, lack of food and sleep, all catching up with him. He didn't have the energy or the desire to answer the Irishman and wanted nothing more than just a few moments to sleep. When the sloshing in his head lessened he moved back to his feet and eyed the carriage, then the horses below. They were calm enough, apparently unbothered by the presence of their scaly barn-mate.

Jim checked the Irishman's bonds then stepped carefully back down to the ground floor gathering the tack he would need to hitch the horses to the carriage. He'd already led one of the animals from its stall and into the harness before he heard the first confused voice shouting from the house. Unger's men had awakened and discovered that the girls were missing.

The Mick heard the voices too and Jim met his eyes in the same moment that one of the men outside noticed the glow of the lantern in the barn. Getzman took a deep breath and started to holler and Jim dropped the second harness, charging over the mess of buckles and leather between the horse and the driver's box, and tearing up the stairs slapping a hand over the Irishman's mouth. He pulled his gun and twisted painfully, aiming the weapon carefully at the top of the lantern, intending to snuff the flame without shattering the basin and scattering fuel all over the barn. He pulled the trigger a second before Getzman bit down hard against his hand.

Gagging on the cry of surprised pain, Jim forced his hand even deeper into Getzman's mouth until the pressure caused the Irishman to widen his jaws, and West quickly yanked the wounded appendage free, then pistol whipped the Irishman into silence.

"Should've left you for the snake..." Jim muttered, wincing at the dark splash of blood visible on his palm in the gloom of the barn.

The gunshot had confused the men outside and the sudden extinguishing of the light dissuaded them from getting any closer to a building that potentially held an armed enemy.

"Where are they!?" That was Unger. Sounding indignant and accusatory, and perhaps a little hung over.

The other men couldn't answer him, and as his eyes adjusted Jim could see them, through a narrow opening in the slats that formed the side of the barn, spreading out across the yard, as if the girls might have been hiding in the tall grasses. Three of the five men with Unger were heading for the barn.

Probably for the same reason Jim had extinguished the lantern, the men did not have illumination with them, but in the slight glow from the moon they still made fine targets. What he needed most was elevation and a reliable source of ammunition.

The one he could easily attain, the other... First however West moved in the darkness to the Mick and removed the ropes from around his wrists and ankles. He searched the man's pockets for the one thing that no Irishman could do without, found the flask and sprinkled a fair amount of its contents over Getzman's clothing. He tipped the flask over the Mick's mouth too, then left his empty derringer crammed into the man's lifeless hand. The scene set, Jim stepped up the only ladder that led to a second hay loft and pulled it up after him, laying as low as he could in the stink of the rotting hay, the smell once more turning his stomach.

He'd barely settled when he heard a voice close to the door shout, "Whos'ever is in there...we've got ya covered. Give yourself up!" The voice was young, probably about the same age as Angus had been, but this boy was clearly from the west. Kansas territory probably.

"Mebbe he's dead. Shot himself." Another voice suggested hopefully, sounding a little older, but not in the least wiser.

"You 'git. What are the chances a person shootin' himself would also shoot out a lantern. Hey in there! Final warnin!"

"Why are you men lolly-gagging? Get in there and see to the horses!" Came Unger's voice from the yard. Jim cleared a handful of straw out of his field of vision and waited as the door creaked open. The horses whinnied at the sound, but otherwise remained still. The one that Jim had already hitched to the carriage pulled at the harness a little.

"One of the horses is hitched!" The younger voice said, then shouted, "Hey! You gillies in here?"

"Yor a little old for hide an' seek ain't ya?" The second voice said and a moment later its owner cried out in pain. "OW! What was that for?"

"Y'all don't say things like that to a lady."

"Captain ain't never said they was ladies."

A lantern was bouncing from the house, across the yard toward the barn. Jim was suddenly overcome with the urge to dig in even deeper but he knew any movement would give him away. His distraction would either work or it wouldn't.

As the light spilled into the barn Jim could see that the bearer was Unger himself. All three men spotted the Mick at the same time. As they moved closer they expressed disgust at the blood covering the man, and then at the alcohol that he reeked of. Unger observed the man's condition, the one horse hitched and the gun in the man's hand. He spat on the unconscious Mick and kicked his backside hard, kicking him again and again until the man began to come around. Both of Unger's men stood as far away as they could get and said nothing, only occasionally eyeing one another in surprise.

As soon as Getzman's eyes opened Unger dragged him upright by his collar spraying him with spittle and epitaphs, accusing him of being a traitor and a coward. "You led that government man right to me, you vile-" The rest of what he had to say was cut off when one of the horses in the stalls started to stomp its feet angrily at something on the ground, tossing his head in agitation.

That snake, Jim thought, watching as the panic quickly spread until every horse in the barn was throwing a fit. Including the horse hitched to the carriage.

His new plan had only half-formed in his mind when Jim's once in a lifetime opportunity presented itself. Drawn by the commotion that had started in the stalls, Unger and both his men had moved under the loft Jim inhabited, the lantern going with them. The Mick was left temporarily on his own and began crawling off the platform Jim had dragged him onto, trying to gain his feet.

His enemy for the moment entirely distracted Jim got his boots under him as quietly as possible, judged the distance between the upper loft and the top of the carriage, took three steps and jumped. He landed as loudly as he could, crying out at the horse still hitched and snatching at least one of the reins, flicking it as hard as he could against the animal's back. The already spooked horse took off, taking the carriage with it, out of the barn and into the darkness.

Shots followed but far too late to hit anything and Jim scrambled for both of the reins, directing the horse onto the road.

A temporary solution, West thought, putting some distance between himself and the barn. That was until ten minutes had passed and he saw Artemus Gordon and another man racing towards him through the moonlight, both on horseback. The partners reined in cautiously several yards away from one another before they drew closer.

"Artemus...thank God...the girls?"

"Louise is safe, we left her back in Marcum in Doctor Weeks' care. Hannah should be at Mr. Marshall's home presently. James West, Ezekial Marshall." Arte added as almost an afterthought, then walked his horse closer inspecting the myriad of cuts, bruises and blood covering his partner. He hoped that what looked terrifying in the dark, would be less so in the light.

"Unger and his men are back there, and probably on their way here." Jim said. "I suggest we find someplace else to regroup."

Arte nodded then glanced to Ezekiel who quickly understood and said, "Gentlemen, follow me."

"Jim! There's a horse coming!" Arte whispered harshly, and both men automatically cocked pistols, knowing there was nowhere to hide. The horse that rounded the bend however, had no rider, and a very familiar limp.

Jim laughed and stepped down from the carriage tenderly, limping slightly himself as he moved to greet the faithful animal. "Sorry for leavin' ya back there, pal." He whispered to the horse, then tied the stallion's loose reins to the railing of the carriage. Jim and Black Jack took up the rear, the entourage moving as quickly as possible through the darkness until they reached the farmhouse.

It was no surprise to Ezekiel that the wood smoke escaping the chimney smelled faintly of sausage, eggs and frying bread. Nor did the man seem surprised when a young negro boy tore out of the house on the heels of an older brother, heading to the barn to assist in making each of the new menagerie of animals as comfortable as possible. Jim, Arte, Ezekiel and his two sons remained in the barn until the last of the work was done, and the wound on Black Jack's flank was cleaned and dressed. The bullet, unfortunately, would have to remain in the muscle for the time being.

When they entered the house Arte and Jim sighed in frustration to find both Louise and Hannah at the breakfast table helping Helena expand the simple meal. Equal surprise was expressed at the condition of both men, Jim especially, and the kitchen became something of a circus with one end of the room dedicated to triage, and the other to meal preparation.

Jim was provided with a clean change of clothes and they sat down together to eat the meal, a bizarre family gathering in the middle of what felt very much like a war. It had begun to remind Jim a little of some of the homes they had inhabited during the war years, homes that had to be shared by the residents, whether they were sympathetic to the northern cause or not.

By the end of the meal both secret service agents had introduced themselves to the Marshalls and Louise and Hannah had explained how they knew the former slave, now freed, family turned farmers.

Ezekiel, as it turned out, had offered his services when he discovered that a local archaeological dig needed men for the backbreaking work of moving sod and sifting it through grates. There was also the tedious task of cataloging and labeling everything deemed an artifact. As there was less work to be done on the farm Ezekiel sought the extra money and signed up with shovel in hand. A brief conversation with a curious and forthright Louise turned Ezekiel from ditch digger to clerk, and he put his unusual intelligence in the realm of reading, writing and arithmetic to the task.

By the time he left the job to begin the harvest, the professor in charge of the project had asked permission to keep Ezekiel's name and address in a file in case he needed him for another job. He doubted he would see another dig, Ezekiel said, but the work had put some good money in his pocket, most of which was safely tucked away.

"I always heard about rainy day money. I never thought I'd be fortunate enough to have any. Now we got somethin' to add on to." Ezekiel said, smiling in appreciation at Louise who blushed, and smiled back.

"Ezekiel been teachin' the boys about readin' and writin'. Once I saw the kinda money it make I started learnin' too." Helena said, a little shy to admit to it at first, but Ezekiel's proud grin encouraged her.

After the meal was cleared away blankets were provided and mattresses pulled from the beds to make a temporary hostel of the kitchen. Helena and Ezekiel took themselves back to bed for the few hours they had left before their morning's work truly began, leaving their impromptu guests on their own.

Hannah and Louise sat together on one of the mattresses, their blankets pulled up to their chins, neither one appearing tired in the least. Jim was asleep in minutes, but Arte too found himself unable to drift off.

"Mr. Gordon, are you still awake?"

The voice had been Hannah's. Arte stood and moved to the pile of firewood in the corner of the room, feeding a log into the kitchen stove before he sat in one of the chairs around the table. He waited as Hannah hesitated through the question she wanted to ask.

"Before Mr. West...rescued me he...he was under the impression that Louise and I had been coerced into believing Joseph Unger's claims...I wasn't certain then why he said it but...but Mr. West said that Unger wasn't my father. And he...he seemed to believe it himself."

Arte felt his stomach lurch, something akin to stage fright shooting through him. After taking a deep breath Arte began to explain what he had discovered when he first arrived in Marcum. He told them what it seemed his partner had already shared, about Hudson's protective nature and his knowledge of their mother. Arte avoided bringing up Hetsy. He'd finally remembered where he had recognized the name from. It had been one of the aliases on the wanted poster bearing Gordon's picture.

After joining the secret service he'd read more than a few articles on the criminals known as serial murderers and Hetsy, although never caught, was believed to have been one of them. Even if Hudson and Hetsy really were the same man, Hudson was dead and Hannah, Hudson's daughter, did not need to know the darkness of the man's past.

By the time he explained to her Doctor Weeks' theory, combined with the final confession of Anna Unger, both girls were silent, tears spilling down their faces.

"So then my father...my real father...was Sergeant Hudson?" Hannah asked.

Arte nodded.

"Why would he-" Then Hannah cut herself off and nodded, her eyes lighting a little. "He must have assumed that letting me believe what we had been told was better. After all, we thought Fath- we thought _he_ was dead."

Hesitant to interrupt, wanting to do everything that she could to support her sister, Louise still could not resist asking the question that had been burning through her very being. "Do you know...who my father is?"

Arte started to open his mouth then found that he could no longer speak. He couldn't even bring himself to look at Louise, a wave of regret, shame and fear overwhelming him.

Louise sensed the change immediately and moved away from the wall, getting to her knees in a gentile fashion before she peered closer at the man who had been broadening their understanding of the world in ways that no professor ever could.

Hannah found herself looking between Louise and Arte, like watching a frantic tennis match until she drew in a sharp breath.

"Louise..." Arte said, taking her hand in his own, unaware that he had been shaking until he saw her hand shake in response to his touch. "If I had known all those years ago...that you...were...mine. That you lived." He couldn't finish the thought, and was already shaking his head. He should have anyway, he thought. He should have pursued Anna to the ends of the earth instead of accepting that all he had loved had perished, and bitterly moving on.

Louise was silent for a long time, barely breathing, clinging to Arte's hand but making no other contact with him. Her mind was a riot of memories, old and new. Of being a weak child, but stubborn, creative and always asking questions that were unbecoming of a lady. Of harsh words from her father, from her step-mother; of knowing that neither of her parents understood the way she thought, or her unending thirst for knowledge. Of always knowing that she was different, even from Hannah.

Then meeting Mr. Gordon. Sensing that he knew them, though they had only just met. The moment when his debonair and kind face suddenly melded with that of a photo that had for the longest time represented all that was evil in the world for Louise and her sister. Feeling mistrust and hate, and those feelings changing into surprised relief.

When she finally did move it was at first hesitant and slow, then sure and powerful. Louise stood, drew Arte to his feet, and slipped her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek against his chest. As she felt his arms close around her, she was enveloped by something she had wanted since the day she was born.

All of her childhood she had watched young girls hugging their fathers in this way, delighting in the warmth, safety and fulfillment that came from knowing that no other man on earth could love them so much, so freely, so unconditionally as their father. With Joseph Unger, even the rare moments of contact were cold, and calculated. But this...this was what she had hoped for all her life; had wept in despair for when there was no one to give her away on her wedding day.

This was the true definition of home.

As Arte held his daughter against him, his first and only child, he understood something new and wonderful. A sense of home of his own. He gently lay a hand against the back of her head, and wished that he had been there to see her grow, lose her first tooth, scrape her knee, then overcome. To have been there on her wedding day, to give her to the man she had chosen to marry. Or to have comforted her the day she was told her marriage had ended, her husband a respected but dead war hero.

When Louise pulled away she gave Artemus a quiet, tired smile, then gently pecked his cheek, retreating to the mattress that Hannah had since vacated, lying down and closing her eyes. Arte did what he could to return to reality. To remember that there was danger lurking, and he would need sleep if he was going to protect his daughter...daughters so far as he was concerned.

It took him a long time to get to sleep and morning came all too soon.

With the morning came a column of thick black smoke that Ezekiel noticed as soon as the sun began to rise. He quickly awakened Artemus, pointing to the thick cloud. "There are no other structures on this road but that farm at the end of it. That isn't a field fire."

A hunch stirred in Arte's gut, answering a question that had been bothering him subconsciously for most of the night. How had Louise escaped and arrived at the Marshall's home without being seen by James West? There had to be another road, a back way of some kind. When Arte asked, Ezekiel showed him a footpath that wound through the woods starting at the back of his property. Primarily the path was meant to provide access to the river and to the trees for firewood. Arming himself, Arte took a horse down the path at a cautious pace, drawing closer and closer to the column of smoke.

Before he reached the property he found a small dock built into the river bank. A shallow draft boat might have been moored there and no one would have known or suspected.

The house and barn Unger had held the girls in were engulfed in flame. Arte was certain that the property had been vacated but just the same he stuck to the treeline, watching as the walls fell in, able to feel the heat from the conflagration from fifty yards away.

When he returned to the Marshall house he found his partner awake, sore and grumpy.

"Why would Unger set everything on fire?"

"Destroying evidence? Perhaps this is his modus operandi." Arte said with a frustrated shrug. He was more convinced now than ever that Unger had murdered Anna long ago, along with another man...Hudson had made the accusation in Marcum, then burned the tugboat _Hercules_ and scuttled it. "You said that Unger accused Getzman of being a traitor? What would stop him from killing him and burning down the barn and house to cover the act?"

"He's gone?"

"Yes, probably via the river. We aren't going to be able to track him." Arte said.

"We'll put out a wanted poster." Jim said, then realized what had begun the whole escapade in the first place and watched his partner until the irony had occurred to him too. "What about the girls?"

Arte took a deep breath and crossed his arms, looking at his shoes before he said, "Uh...about that, Jim. There's something I should tell you..."


	11. Chapter 11

Jim and Arte remained in Marcum for a week. The period allowed Jim to rest, Louise and Hannah to recover and Arte the time he needed to collect more information.

The fire that Ezekiel Marshall had pointed out was extinguished in under a day. Inside the wreckage of the barn Arte found a body. A closer inspection of the corpse revealed that but for a crushed skull, the poor unfortunate had been in excellent health until he was left in the barn to burn to death. A second body was found in the house. In this case the cause of death was impossible to determine, but the brass cane head that Arte found near the body seemed to indicate that the deceased was Joseph Unger. Arte knew better.

He and Jim decided that Unger, and against all odds, Getzman, were still alive and now at large. One or both of them had committed murder and arson in the past 48 hours, which only added to the myriad of crimes they were now responsible for. More than enough charges to bring against Unger and order his arrest, but Arte would need proof. After he explained the charge of treason to his partner, Arte spent three days in the Marcum news office with a recovering Sheriff Stone, and Louise and Hannah, picking through every reserved newspaper they could find. Once Arte identified the periodicals published in the spring of 1865 he began to find what he was looking for.

Marcum had become Joseph Unger's home following the war. In that time he kept to himself, living on the property that had been abandoned when the Yankees moved south, and parceling out the surrounding fields to freedmen moving into the area, allowing them to farm the land in exchange for a cut of the profits. He was not known to have family, or friends. There was a small mention of a new property owner, J. Unger, in an article from June of that year, buried under the continued talk of area confederate sympathizers trying to organize a second revolution to rival the first.

The article had offered a name and an origin; the county that Unger had claimed to have come from on the documents he signed for the deed. While Arte and his crew dug through Marcum's past, Jim had been enlisted to use the telegraph to follow Unger's history before Marcum. Even with a decade gone by, few were willing to open up about the identities of those who had in many ways become non-entities following the war. After implying that he was a southern sympathizer Jim was able to coerce an official CSA roster of persons enlisted early in the spring of 1864 out of the hands of a self-made historian in a town a hundred miles south of Marcum.

Captain Joseph Unger's name was on that list. He had enlisted in Mississippi but had been assigned to a company of Kentuckians near devastated in rank, rebuilding their unit before returning to the fray. For whatever reason he had been made an officer, in charge of a company that included, among others, the name Getzman. There were several Ians as well, and Arte could only assume that the ginger Hudson had killed, was one of them.

Communication was also set up with the professor still working on the shell of the Hercules and, under the guise of further curiosity, Hannah and Louise visited the professor for a day, asking after his findings. According to the archaeologist and anthropologist the boat had been set aflame, allowed to burn for a few hours, then was scuttled, bullet holes riddling the hull until it began to sink. The two bodies found inside the boat had likely died at the origin of the fire.

The male had suffered multiple, bone-deep cuts on his arms and chest before he was shot through the abdomen, the bullet lodged against a back rib. The marks were visible on the bones and the professor pointed them out casually, seeing only curiosity in the faces of his former pupils. When he moved on to the female skeleton both girls stepped back unconsciously. The professor noticed the reaction but pressed on. The female had been in her twenties, or so he assumed, but had borne children multiple times, probably very recently before her death. The added fat in her body had made the fire burn hotter around her, cooking the bones just a little more.

When Louise left the room suddenly, Hannah following her, the professor stopped speaking, realizing that he had missed something. Hannah returned and quietly explained that she and her sister were certain that they knew the female victim, and were in fact related to her. The professor tried to refuse to go any further with his findings but Hannah was even more adamant that he continue.

The female had been killed instantly with a strike to the heart from a long blade. Likely a saber of some kind. The professor showed the marks on the rib cage to Hannah, pointing out that the angle was strange. Either the woman's killer had been knocked down and was striking from a position on the ground, or the woman had been falling when the blade struck.

Or, Hannah thought, Analise Unger had killed herself. Before they left, Hannah exchanged temporary contact information with the professor and asked that any further revelations be sent to them. They would, in time, collect the body.

While Hannah and Louise were away from Marcum, Arte pursued a different avenue of investigation finally finding information in the newspaper of the young woman Doctor Weeks had mentioned. In an article dated nine months after the incident with the Monica II, Gordon discovered the announcement of a child being adopted into the family of Wendell and Thelma Kuck, and a day later the obituary of the tragic death of local school teacher Miss Riley. Her body had been found lodged down river under a log float. She was 23.

The child was named Theodore Kuck. A boy, born of the unholy relations between Miss Riley and her alleged attacker, Harold Hetsy. Hannah, Arte realized, had a brother. He decided not to reveal it to Hannah. It would cause more pain than joy, and he had no way of knowing what had become of Theodore, who likely wouldn't want to know that his birth had been the result of an attack on a mother he never knew.

When they finally returned to the train they had a folder filled with news articles, signed transcripts from the professor of archaeology and rosters of the former Confederate Army; as much proof as they were likely to get to convince Richmond that Unger was a criminal to be hunted down, and not a war hero.

On their return trip to Cincinnati the four spent many long hours in conversation, discussing the future and the past. Arte had quickly established that where his relationship with Hannah and Louise was concerned, there would be few boundaries or limitations. Any questions the ladies wanted answers to he would do his best to provide.

"What...what should I call you?" Louise asked, finally voicing the question that Arte had been expecting to hear.

"Whatever makes you the most comfortable, I suppose." Arte said.

"What did mother call you?" Hannah asked.

"Sandy." Arte said, mildly surprised that he remembered the name.

Both girls pondered for a moment. "Sandy...that doesn't seem to fit, does it?" Louise asked, looking to her sister.

Hannah smirked and shook her head. "No...why not just Arte?"

After pulling into the Pearl Street station a day later Hannah and Louise had agreed that they weren't likely to call Cincinnati 'home' for very much longer. They had some business to conclude in the city however and spent the day tending to their affairs while Jim and Arte brought their evidence to Colonel Richmond.

Their commander wasn't terribly pleased with the accusations, and was even less thrilled to see the evidence accrued against a man he had once considered himself indebted to. By the end of the debriefing, however, he had agreed to release an arrest order for Unger and Getzman. Arte quietly noted the irony; that he was now putting out a wanted poster with Unger's likeness on it. The poster that Hannah and Louise should have been exposed to as children.

Richmond had spent much of the debriefing clutching the arms of the chair he sat in with a white knuckled grip. The twisted and dark, ever winding tale hadn't encouraged him to release his grip at all. He could see that both Gordon and West were exhausted. Both were still stiff as the result of various injuries and Gordon had a spray of gray hair near his temple that Richmond didn't remember him having.

Before they left, the Colonel poured each man a brandy and offered a toast; congratulations to Arte on his new-found family. After they drank Arte cleared his throat, licked his lips then said, "I have one request, Colonel. A special favor. The bodies of Anna Unger, and that of Hannah's father, Harold Hudson, are still in Mississippi. I would like to arrange that they both be interred in New York City. Hannah and Louise have expressed their desire to live in Manhattan and I intend to see that what remains of their family goes with them."

Richmond considered the request, knowing there was no way he could, or would, deny it. "Any specific grave yard?"

Arte smiled slightly, and nodded. "There is a large cemetery just off 5th Avenue. I...have an 'aunt' buried there." He exchanged a smirk with Jim before he said. "I'd be happy to provide the details when the time comes, and I'm certain the girls would wish to be there to see their mother laid to rest."

Richmond agreed to keep in contact with the two about the information.

In the time that Arte and Jim had been embroiled in their investigation October had gone and November had taken firm hold. The two men had already earned almost a month of vacation time that they had intended to take in December while visiting a mutual friend. A week of that time could be used now, Arte decided, to help settle the girls in Manhattan.

Richmond informed them that odd circumstances in California had begun to stir the locals of a small farming community, and were bizarre enough to bring to mind the work of a certain Doctor. Jim agreed to take The Wanderer west to begin his investigation. Arte would report to the coast a week later.

After dropping them in New York, Jim bid his partner and the two women the best of luck, and left for California.

As the end of his week with Louise and Hannah drew to a close Arte asked that the girls spend their Saturday shopping for new formal gowns and accessories, the entire affair paid for out of his pocket with a single stipulation. That they be presentable and standing ready outside their home at five o'clock precisely, at which time a hack would collect them.

The hack would take them to the train station and they were to board the five-forty-five to Washington with tickets purchased and waiting for them at the courtesy counter. Arte promised he would be there in Washington to greet them and ferry them to their final destination.

When the girls stepped off the train they were resplendent. Hannah had chosen royal blue, with gold highlights, and Louise a chocolate-brown with similar gold highlights. Each wore a cape that matched, and hats that were elegant but simple.

Arte greeted them, of course dressed in a black tuxedo and proudly escorted them to the open carriage waiting on the street, pulled by white horses, with warm blankets to be thrown over the laps of the passengers in transit. The November air was cold and crisp, the lights of Washington sparkling brightly. No matter how many times they asked, however, Arte refused to reveal the function they would be attending. As they pulled onto Pennsylvania Avenue, then through the gates that would lead them to the White House, joining a long line of similar carriages laden with guests, the girls began to grin broadly.

"But who are these people, Arte?" Hannah asked. "Surely we don't belong at this gathering."

Arte merely smirked and stepped out of the carriage, helping both girls down, before he offered each an arm and proudly escorted them into the building. Before they had gone ten feet Arte had already led them away from the path the guests were taking, guiding them through the mess of hallways and doors until they reached a large, pale yellow aperture. Arte knocked and waited, speaking quietly to the man who cracked the door open, then opened it further and allowed the three to enter.

Standing by the fireplace, a brandy in hand, his tie a tangled mess that Julia was doing her best to correct, was the President of the United States. Sparkling blue eyes glanced with anticipation at the secret service agent who entered, guiding two charming ladies with him. Grant grinned, impatient until Julia finally finished with the tie. Arte waited with the same anticipatory delight until Grant strode over and offered his hand to Gordon, then greeted both Hannah and Louise.

Both girls gave a graceful curtsy, greeting Grant as Mr. President with an impressed and dignified awe.

"These are the young ladies you wired me about then?" Grant asked. And Arte nodded. "And you say they have an interest in archaeology and history."

Hannah and Louise exchanged a wide-eyed look before they beamed, not certain where this was going.

"Then I would say they should enjoy this evening very much." Grant said before he set down his brandy and escorted both ladies from the room. "You see my dears we have been keeping an eye on the history craze that has begun over in England and Egypt, and in some parts of our Southwest as well. Why in Mexico and further south there are hundreds of ancient civilizations waiting to be discovered. So we have gathered together the most prominent members of archaeological science in this nation..."

Arte stayed in the room, listening to the president's fading voice, until Julia had gathered her wrap and hand bag. He offered his arm to the First Lady, escorting her into the hall. Julia was smiling softly and once they were alone in the hall she leaned in and quietly asked, "Which one is your daughter?"

Arte wasn't in the least surprised that Grant had informed Julia of the latest development and he pointed to the one currently asking questions, "Louise." Julia laughed behind a demure hand and said, "Yes, I might have guessed. You must be very proud. From what Ulysses has told me, they are extraordinary women."

Arte took a deep breath, nodding. "They are that, yes. All on their own."

"Have you made any plans with them for the future?" Julia asked and Arte thought about the question as they approached the Grande Ballroom. Already they could hear the applause of the gathered guests directed at the President, and the two mysterious women he had escorted into the room. Arte could feel his chest swelling, his head and heart filled with hope, pride, excitement and purpose in ways that they never had before. Something about fatherhood, he decided, that made life entirely different.

"My dear Julia, they _are_ my future."

* * *

**A/N: **Thank you to my faithful reviewers. This took longer than I intended to write but your encouragement helped me stick with it, and yes you will be seeing Louise and Hannah, and probably Joseph Unger and Getzman sometime in the future. Very little of historical significance was used in this fic primarily because from the get-go I had to accept that showboats simply weren't that popular in the 1870s. They made their major comeback well into the 1900s.

However, Hetsy was a real criminal and I loosely based my character Hudson/Hetsy on him.

And yes, as hinted, I will be finally writing a Loveless fic in the near future.

Thank you ladies! And, as always, keep writing!


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